100 Days
by borogroves
Summary: Kurt and Blaine have been best friends (and nothing more) since the age of six. Now 22-year-old college graduates, they take a roadtrip around the USA, visiting every state in 100 days. Fifty states. Two boys. One love story. (Updated Wednesdays.)
1. T-Minus One

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day -001: Saturday 15 September, 2012  
****T-Minus One****  
**

"Well, if I didn't know how much you hated Maine before..." Kurt trailed off, glancing up at Blaine as he drank deeply from his bottle of water and wiped across his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I don't hate it," he said, setting the bottle down next to Kurt's and leaning back against the edge of the table, the sticky wood entirely characteristic of The Cannery, their local bar; everything worn and in dire need of replacement. "I'm just... I'm done here."

"I know you are. It's time we both got out," Kurt replied. "For good this time, not just for a year across the pond."

"I still wish you could have come with me," Blaine affirmed, a wistful smile tugging at the edges of his mouth before he added, "That's exactly why I'm happy we're doing this, though. But first, I have a gig to finish. Two more songs, I promise."

"Alright. But Blaine—"

Kurt was stopped abruptly as Blaine placed a finger across his lips, and he fought the childish impulse to stick out his tongue and lick.

"They're good ones, I swear," Blaine told him with a wink that, were it anyone else, Kurt would have considered bordering on flirtatious. But this was Blaine; his best friend of sixteen years. Despite the crush that Kurt tended to harbor for him whenever he found himself single—and, in fact, almost constantly since Blaine's return from London—he would never have thought of acting on it. They had so much shared history, and so many boundaries in place that had helped keep them exactly what they were to one another. It was nothing more than an occasional harmless crush, perhaps even some bastardized version of hero worship. Kurt never spent too long thinking about it.

Blaine took his place on stage amongst the other members of his band once more, strumming the opening bars of what Kurt vaguely recognized as a OneRepublic song. The Spinning Cogs, reunited for one night only, had spent the previous hour or so playing music that was about getting out, taking off, breaking free. It was a difficult message to miss.

"_This town is colder now, I think it's sick of us,"_ Blaine sang, shooting him a grin, and Kurt good-naturedly rolled his eyes.

"You've got it bad."

Kurt almost jumped out of his skin and his breath came raggedly for a few moments as he glared at the girl sitting down across the booth from him.

"April, I swear to god if you keep on about that..."

"Aw, Kurt, come on," April cajoled him with a nudge of her shoulder. "You know they say you tell the truth when you're drunk."

"Okay, one: I wasn't drunk," Kurt said hotly, entirely sick of the conversation that had seemed to be playing on a loop for the past three weeks. "Two: I was speaking objectively. Of course Blaine's hot. Have you seen him? I mean, you'd have to be blind. But I don't think of him that way; it's _weird_."

"Denial is not just a river in Egypt," April quipped, looking at him like she could read his mind, which only irritated him more.

"And old clichés are not going to make me start spilling my guts to you about my feelings for Blaine," Kurt retorted, before appending, "or lack thereof."

They stared each other down for a long moment before finally cracking up and dissolving into a fit of laughter.

"I'm really gonna miss you, Kurt," April said, looping her arm through his as the band segued smoothly into The Rescues' _Break Me Out_.

"It's only three months," Kurt reminded her. "We'll see you guys in Indiana, and Juneau, and we'll all be back here in time for New Year's."

"You'd better be coming back. It's bad enough that you're skipping town on your birthday. And _only_ three months? You're my best friend, what's gonna become of me without you?" April asked, sighing dramatically with the back of her hand to her forehead. "I swear, when we meet up, I'll be sporting only the very best of Walmart couture."

"Ugh, please don't talk about Walmart," Kurt groaned. "We'll be parking the R.V. at one too many for my liking. Can you catch bad taste through proximity and exposure?"

April snorted, and they lapsed into silence to enjoy the rest of the song. It was the last song of the last performance that The Spinning Cogs would ever give, but Kurt caught himself thinking that it was almost comforting, the way one thing could end and something new could immediately take its place. It didn't always happen, and sometimes when it did it was far from comforting, but they were standing at the beginning of a road. They were about to embark upon a journey that would take them to every state in the country.

"_Break me out,"_ Blaine sang, holding the last note, and the band wound up the song with a huge crescendo that rang in Kurt's ears. He watched as Blaine hugged Stuart, Jeff and Max in turn, before the band began to pack up their things, a sense of closure seeming to settle upon their shoulders. Soon, Blaine was bouncing over to Kurt with his guitar case in tow, still running on his performance high.

"That's coming with us, right?" Kurt asked, gesturing to the case.

"I thought you said there wouldn't be room," Blaine replied.

"We'll make room," Kurt said lightly, before turning to April. "Thank you so much for throwing us this party. I'll miss you too, you know."

"You'd better, or else what have you got to come back for?" she bantered, though her dark eyes were swimming. "Oh, come here." She pulled Kurt into a hug, rocking him from side to side.

"You're always my best girl," Kurt said, voice muffled against her shoulder as he squeezed her so tightly that even _he_ was a little short of breath.

"Alright, go, before I take you hostage," April instructed, stepping back to wave a hand between him and Blaine. "Be careful, be safe, and look out for each other. Get back here in one piece, okay?"

"Promise," Blaine said, sweeping her into a brief hug of his own. "Later, April."

They remained quiet on the short drive back to their street. When they arrived at Kurt's house, Blaine stopped just long enough for Kurt to get out, before continuing on to park his beloved Honda in his mom's garage, where it would remain until next year.

Kurt took his brief window of alone time to run his fingers over the corners of uneven walls and the wavering mantel over the open fireplace that he'd always hated for all of its ugly imperfection, yet now found himself inexplicably fond of. He wandered almost aimlessly through the living room to the den with new eyes that no longer seemed aware of the slight fray to the edges of the carpet or the small bubbles in the wallpaper that betrayed the presence of damp pockets trapped against the stucco beneath.

"You're going to miss this place. Admit it, Hummel," Blaine said, and Kurt's breath caught for a tiny measure at the sight of him leaning casually against the door frame, the spare house key from underneath the mat catching the light as Blaine turned it between his fingers.

"Don't know what you're talking about. It's not like we haven't left home before, Blaine," Kurt reminded him, because they were graduates—_adults_—now, leaving aside the fact that most of the time Kurt still felt like a confused, angry teenager.

"We came home most weekends. It's different this time," Blaine said, pushing off the frame and dropping the key onto the mantel before settling onto the arm of the couch. As usual, he looked entirely at ease in his own skin, a quality that Kurt had envied as long as he could remember. "What time are Burt and Carole due back?"

"Late, I think. Dad mentioned something about _Gone With The Wind_ showing at Eveningstar," Kurt said. Blaine followed him into the kitchen, watched as he pulled ingredients from the pantry and set them down by the stove.

"He'd never sit through that movie for someone he wasn't crazy for, would he?" Blaine asked knowingly, yet carefully.

Kurt exhaled sharply, opened his mouth, but said nothing.

"So it's our last night," Blaine said brightly, parting the tension like he was Moses facing down the Red Sea. Bumping their hips together, he sidled in close, rested his head on Kurt's shoulder with an adoring look, and simpered, "What's for dinner, honey?"

Kurt elbowed him away and concealed the grin he wasn't yet ready to give into. _"You_ are making my favorite because it's my birthday tomorrow and it'll be consolation for whatever terrible shirt you got me this year. And I'm making cornbread because you were great today and I was proud of you."

"I hope so," Blaine said fondly, grabbing a mixing bowl from beneath the sink and setting to work on his Aztec couscous. They moved around one another in the kitchen with a near-silent, practiced ease that had come from years of learning one another by heart.

When everything was ready, they set themselves up in the Adirondack chairs on the back deck, counting fireflies at the bottom of the yard.

Kurt knew that neither of them had quite learned who they were, yet. They hadn't found themselves in amongst the term papers and library stacks, nor in the space between their dorm beds where they held hands every night for the first week of freshman year to anchor each other in a sea of homesickness. They were both—especially Blaine—chasing those elusive threads of a life that seemed to be hiding around every corner, twelve steps ahead and always just vanishing out of sight.

"This is going to be awesome, right?" Blaine asked, setting his plate aside and wiping his mouth with one of the cloth napkins Kurt had brought out. Kurt took a sip of his ice water before nodding. "It's the start of something really, really great?"

"It's going to be incredible. I'm so glad we're doing this," he replied, putting his hand over Blaine's and curling his fingers into the space above Blaine's thumb.

* * *

**Distance: 0.0 miles**


	2. The First Step (Maine)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 000: Sunday 16 September, 2012  
****The First Step (Maine)****  
**

"_So what's our first movie going to be?"_

"_Has to be _Forrest Gump. Has _to be."_

"_I think I can live with that. Alright, Anderson. One down, forty-nine to go."_

* * *

Blaine stood outside the R.V., the thumb of his left hand tracing around the patterns on his pocket watch casing, the fingers of his right absently swinging the keys back and forth. It was just after sunset and the sky was somewhere between periwinkle and cobalt. The stars hadn't yet made their twinkling appearance, though Blaine doubted if they would even be visible through the thin layer of cirrostratus that had contained the late-September humidity since mid-morning.

The entire summer had been leading to this point. All the hours logged on Google Maps and Wikipedia; all the vetoes cashed in when debating movie choices; all the grease that got lodged beneath his stubby fingernails as they fixed up the R.V. outside Burt's shop. All of it done in the name of a bond that they could trace back sixteen years, to a day not dissimilar to this one.

_Blaine met his best friend in the entire world for the first time on a Saturday in late September, when he finally jumped out of the big U-Haul truck that had carted his family's entire life all the way from Fredericksburg. It felt good to finally be outside and moving around after having to stay still for so long, so long he could barely contain himself. He felt like he was about to pop, he had so much energy._

_Once he had helped his dad take out all the little boxes and earned himself a grin and a high five, all that was left were the big pieces of furniture that only his big brother, Cooper, could help with. His mom told him to go ride his bike since they'd just unpacked it, and to go make friends with the other little boy circling the junction at the other end of the quiet street, since they were going to be neighbors and all._

_Soon enough, Blaine's bright green bike—his first big boy bike—was drawing level with the boy's blue one, and they rode to the end of the street with shy smiles before coming to a stop near the bright yellow fire hydrant._

"_My name's Blaine," he said, holding out his hand like he'd seen the grown-ups do._

"_I'm Kurt," the boy replied, firmly shaking Blaine's hand once. "Do you like singing?"_

"_I love singing! Disney's my favorite. My big brother Cooper always says I'm real good," Blaine proclaimed proudly, and Kurt grinned._

"_I love singing, too. I sing with my Mommy every day. Maybe you can be my friend and come sing with us," Kurt said, twisting his hands together and looking at Blaine shyly. Blaine couldn't understand why he was so hesitant; he had super-cool clothes—his shoes matched his bow tie and everything—and the most awesome bike that even had streamers on the handlebars. Blaine totally wanted to be friends with him—all he'd ever wanted was a _real_ friend._

"_Let's be __best__ friends!" Blaine yelled excitedly, and Kurt grinned so wide that it almost split his face right in two. Blaine couldn't help but smile back, and he turned his bike around to face the direction they'd come. "Race you to my house!"_

Everything was mostly the same. A little rougher, a little more well-worn and weathered, a little faded and fuzzy around the edges—but the same. It was the reason Blaine had reached this itchy plateau of completion, having done all that he could here. He had hoped, in the dark and cold hours of winter night in London, that he would be able to stick it out here upon returning, but even a week after getting back and spending every waking minute with Kurt, he had known that it wasn't enough. There were places he needed to be, though he didn't know where. All he knew was that he needed to get the hell out of Maine.

"Yes, Dad, I'm sure we have everything!"

Blaine grinned at the irritation in Kurt's voice as he exited through the front door of his cozy little house, the house in which Blaine had always felt more at home than in his own. Burt and Carole were right behind him, both wearing the same expression they had the day he and Kurt had left for Bowdoin—and college was only a couple miles from sleepy, whimsically-named Merrymeeting Road.

Kurt hugged each of them in turn—as always, Blaine noted, Carole rather more briefly than his dad—and beckoned Blaine over.

"Watch out for each other, you two," Burt instructed, hands on both of their shoulders and his shop cap tilted back on his head. Blaine caught Kurt's eye and grinned. "I want you both home in one piece."

"Yes, sir," Blaine replied.

"Kid, how many times? I've known you sixteen years. It's 'Burt'."

"Old habits die hard," Blaine said, and the familiarity of the words that so easily rolled from his tongue brought the point into startling focus—he was truly doing this. Getting out. And he was going to _miss_ these people, this tight, dysfunctional little family that he'd long been expected to call his own.

"Okay," Burt said, sharp inhale and all business, "get outta here."

Kurt crooked his fingers and saluted in a way that Blaine hadn't seen him do since the Unmentionable Flannel Phase, and Burt chuckled, pulling him into one last bear hug. Blaine could hear him whisper something to Kurt but couldn't discern the words, and when he stepped back, Kurt's face was noticeably flushed. Blaine had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smirking—_be safe,_ he wondered with thoughts that meandered back to a sixteen-year-old Kurt practically battering down his front door, red-faced and clutching a handful of pamphlets.

"Let's get out of here," Kurt muttered, avoiding everyone's eyes, and turned on his heel with an awkward wave.

"You'll figure it out, sweetheart," Carole intoned with a meaningful look that preceded a dry, tip-toed kiss to his cheek. "Just _see_ him, alright?"

"What do you mean? See who?" Blaine asked, but Carole simply shook her head and gave him a little push in the direction of the R.V., where Kurt sat waiting in the passenger seat.

"Time to go," she said gently, and Blaine took a step back. One last look at Kurt's house, one last tentative and nervous smile back at Burt and Carole, one lasting closing of the front gate behind him, and his excitement was overwhelmingly threatening to burst out of his skin. He pulled open the door to the cab of the R.V., stepped up and swung himself into the driver's seat, taking a moment to run his hands over the textured leather steering wheel cover before pulling the door shut with a satisfying thud and fastening his seat belt.

"Stoke the fires," Kurt said wryly, rolling down his window.

"Start the engines," Blaine finished, and turned the key in the ignition. As he pulled away from the curb and started toward the end of the street, he continued, "She should really have a name."

"Let's not think about it too hard. I'm sure something suitably fabulous will present itself."

"Hey... Do you maybe want to stop by the cemetery?" Blaine asked quietly, the goodbyes ringing in his ears prompting him to wonder about just one more. Kurt shook his head vehemently as Blaine pulled the R.V. into a wide one-eighty to retrace their road on the opposite side, and they both waved to Burt and Carole where they still stood beneath the porch light, arms wrapped around one another against the slight chill that hung in the air. Blaine wondered if they would start turning it off at night now that both Kurt and Finn had flown the nest completely.

"Okay, last time. Clothes, shoes, toothbrush, hair products, skin stuff," Blaine listed, trying to shake off the lingering vestiges of tension between them as he turned onto Minat Avenue.

"Check. Guitar, laptop, video camera, gas card and credit card even though I still don't agree with accepting your dad's guilt money…"

"Check," Blaine replied, jaw clenched as he pushed all thoughts of his dad far into the dusty, forgotten corners of his mind. He didn't want his still-burning fury with his father to taint their first night on the road together—Baltimore was going to be bad enough. "Halloween costumes."

Kurt laughed as he plugged Blaine's iPod into the stereo and started scrolling. "Check and _check,"_ he said in a low voice that made Blaine swivel his eyes just in time to catch Kurt's gaze raking across him before returning to the playlist. Good-naturedly, he reached across and batted at Kurt's shoulder until they were both laughing.

"All right. This is it, Hummel. Last chance to turn back."

"Are you kidding me? Do you realize how long it took me to teach Dad how to track the GPS on my phone?"

"Just checking."

When they merged onto I-295, joining huge freightliners taking catch of the day all over the country, Blaine reset the odometer and Kurt, having waited until then in honor of their unspoken agreement, hit play.

"Yes!" Blaine exclaimed as U2's _Vertigo_ filled the cab. "Yes. Perfect choice."

"I know," Kurt replied, with no hint of self-satisfaction. He was _good_ with music, Blaine had come to appreciate. The fact that he never sang—which was, occasionally, still a bone of contention between them—had refined his listening, and he supplied Blaine with a new playlist every month or so. Indie, new age, show tunes, Top 40—there was a seeming endlessness to Kurt's hunger for music, and Blaine loved that about him.

"_Hello, hello,"_ he sang in time with the chorus as they sped south along the freeway.

"_Hola!"_

"I thought you didn't sing," Blaine said, voice raised to carry over the music.

Kurt quirked one eyebrow at him, the patented and sardonic Hummel Arch, and rolled his eyes. "That wasn't singing."

By the end of the song, the moment was forgotten as Blaine all but bounced in his seat, yelling in time with Bono and quite unable to keep the grin from lighting him up inside as well as out. _Is this what true freedom feels like? All asphalt, open sky and your favorite person by your side? Because,_ Blaine thought, _it can't get better than this._

When they were about twenty miles away from the campground, just exiting onto Route 1, Blaine took one hand off the steering wheel and reached underneath his seat. Kurt watched him curiously, and looked torn between dismay and anticipation when Blaine handed him two brightly wrapped packages in succession, one thin and soft, and the other small and box-shaped.

"Happy birthday," Blaine told him sincerely, eyes flicking between Kurt and the highway ahead. "Open the big one first. You know what it is anyway."

Carefully, Kurt pushed his fingers underneath the edge of the paper and tore it open to reveal a bright red t-shirt emblazoned with stylized text that read, 'pale is the new tan'. Kurt stared at it for a full ten seconds, muscles working in his jaw, before he burst out laughing.

Blaine's Awesome T-Shirt Tradition (or Blaine's Terrible T-Shirt Tradition, as Kurt referred to it, insisting that the alliteration was both more mellifluous and, most importantly, more accurate), had begun six years earlier, on Kurt's sixteenth birthday. Blaine had been agonizing for weeks over what to buy. Both movies and music had been out, since Kurt just downloaded everything. He'd thought about clothes or accessories, but hadn't had the funds to cater to Kurt's expensive tastes. And then one day, during his fourth fruitless trip to the Plaza, he had come across a street vendor selling some truly awful slogan shirts. As soon as he'd seen the black shirt hanging proudly on display, sporting a green loading bar beneath the legend _sarcastic comment loading,_ he'd pulled out his wallet.

It had been perfect, and despite the look of utter disdain that had contorted Kurt's face upon opening it, he had still worn it to sleep in that night when Blaine stayed over.

"One day, I'm going to make a quilt from all of these terrible shirts," Kurt said, refolding the shirt in his lap with the slogan facing up. "I'll give it to my kids as proof of what a dork their Uncle Blaine is."

"You've kept them all?" Blaine asked, surprised.

"Of course I have, silly."

Blaine smiled, eyes back on the road as he nodded to the other gift. "Difference is that I got you something good this year, too."

As carefully as before, Kurt unwrapped the box with slow and curious movements. Blaine chewed at his lip and actively worked at keeping his gaze trained ahead—he'd never been so nervous about giving someone a gift before, not even when he'd presented his mom with the portrait of her that he'd painted in high school for their project on Cubism. She'd loved it, and it still hung on her bedroom wall.

In his periphery, Kurt opened the slim, square box and removed the tissue paper, letting out a small gasp. "Blaine..."

"You don't have to wear it, or anything," Blaine rushed out, words tripping over themselves. "It's just that, you know, he's the patron saint of travelers. And I know you're not religious or anything, it wasn't about that, I just—"

"Blaine, shut up," Kurt cut across him, reaching over to squeeze his knee. The silver Saint Christopher caught the headlights of passing freightliners where it was already tangled between Kurt's fingers. "Thank you."

"You really like it?"

"I really like it," Kurt affirmed, letting the pendant drop and swing for a moment before taking it by the chain and putting it on, settling the small disc beneath his shirt and palming it through the fabric. "It's perfect. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Before long, they were pulling into the visitor parking at Hemlock Grove Campground in Arundel. Only an hour from home, and already Blaine was starting to feel like Samwise Gamgee, standing in the Shire and telling Frodo that if he took one more step, it would be the farthest from home he'd ever been. It wasn't exactly accurate, of course—he had spent his entire last year of college at King's in London, after all— but, knowing that this was _it,_ he could understand the sentiment. This was what he'd been hungering for since he was fifteen, and while he could one day return to Maine if he wanted to, it would never be the same.

They made their way toward the site office at a comfortable, ambling pace, and Blaine reveled in the cool and beautifully fresh, woody air of the grounds. Kurt's hand rested absently just below his collar, toying with his Saint Christopher through the fabric until he came to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the steps up to the office porch. Blaine paused at the top, looking back at him in question.

"Would you still have taken this trip if I hadn't come, too? Would you still have left?" Kurt asked quietly, and Blaine was entirely taken aback by the vulnerability that pulled at the corners of his mouth. The lights from inside the office spilled out through half-closed horizontal blinds, and suddenly Blaine wished there wasn't a swath of shadow falling across Kurt's eyes.

The truth was that Blaine had been waiting for this for years. Since the day the bottom dropped out of his world, mere weeks after he and Kurt had both come out to their respective families. For him, Maine represented a lot of things, and not all of them good. He needed to see so much more of the world, leave a mark of himself behind. He wanted to be something good, something great, to reach out and affect someone—even if it was just one person. Those were things he'd never admitted aloud, content to keep them close to his chest—but Kurt must have known. He _must_ have.

"I..." he trailed off, not knowing where to take the rest of the sentence. Would he really have been able to leave Kurt behind again? Would he have found the strength to go another three and a half months—probably much longer, given his lack of desire to ever set foot in Maine again—without his hurricane of a best friend, this immutable kindred spirit who could tear him apart and put him back together in a better combination? He'd never even had to think about it before; when he had first brought up the idea of the road trip, there had been no doubt in his mind that Kurt would be with him.

There were birds chirping a dusk song in the trees surrounding them, and it reminded him a little of the previous day, when he had sung _Stop & Stare—_he'd been singing it for Kurt, almost as if he'd still needed convincing.

"You don't get rid of me that easily, Hummel," he finally said, trying for nonchalance. Kurt huffed a humorless laugh and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Blaine, be serious. What if I'd said no? Or, maybe in a year? Would I have lost you for good this time?"

"Is that why you said yes?" Blaine countered.

"You know it's not," Kurt stated evenly, before letting out a heavy sigh and dropping his arms. "I'm sorry. It's just… It's been a really long day, and I'm terrible with goodbyes. It got me thinking."

"Never a good idea," Blaine joked, and held out his hand. "Come on. We've got a fire pit and s'mores waiting."

"Always with the damn s'mores," Kurt muttered, climbing the steps and taking Blaine's hand in a fleeting squeeze.

When the young clerk with yawning eyes had signed them in and assigned them site 69—much to Kurt's amusement—they made the short drive around the winding track that ran through the park and pulled into their space with a renewed buzz about them. Blaine left Kurt pulling supplies from the fridge to go out to the fire pit, though it became abundantly clear when he got outside that a campfire was not in the cards. Everything was still too damp from the previous day's rain, and he was still standing forlornly by the pit when Kurt stepped out of the R.V., arms laden with a cooler and plates.

"You're quite the Boy Scout, I see," Kurt quipped, bending down and making a show of warming his hands over the non-existent flames.

"Should've gotten you another sarcasm shirt," Blaine grumbled. "It's too damp; I don't think this is gonna happen tonight. Next stop?"

"Next stop," Kurt agreed, stretching his arms and rolling his wrists. "I'm tired anyway, and we have a movie to watch."

Blaine gathered up the bag and plates, following Kurt back inside with only a passing, dejected glance at the fire pit.

Fifteen minutes later, they were both sitting on the bed, on top of the covers in t-shirts and shorts, sucking the color from slices of honeydew melon while Kurt loaded up the movie on Blaine's laptop.

"It's no campfire, but it's pretty damn perfect," Kurt murmured, chasing a trail of juice down his wrist with his tongue and reaching for another slice after he hit play.

They watched in silence for a time, as the feather curled its way down to where Forrest sat on the bus bench.

"I wouldn't have," Blaine said quietly, just as Forrest finished the classic, timeless line about life being like a box of chocolates. Kurt questioned him with a single look. "I wouldn't have left without you."

Kurt smiled, then, and curled his fingers around Blaine's again in the way that somehow only felt right when he did it, and Blaine leaned sideways to rest his head on Kurt's shoulder, settling in for the duration.

* * *

**Distance: 50.6 miles**


	3. Old Ground, New Ground (New Hampshire)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.  
**Note:** For Anna and Tess, the two lovely gals who made my day!

* * *

**Day 001: Monday 17 September, 2012  
****Old Ground, New Ground (New Hampshire)****  
**

"_Come on, Blaine. How many times did you demand that your parents take you to see it at the movies? I've heard you quote it in everyday conversation."_

"_Alright, fine. You win. I guess it's a classic, after all."_

"_You can never go wrong with Robin Williams getting sucked into a board game."_

* * *

The next morning, after he had awoken to Blaine moving quietly around the bedroom as he got dressed for a run, Kurt retrieved his yoga mat from the narrow closet and set it out in front of the couch. With his favorite feel-good playlist floating through the speakers of the iPod dock, he warmed up gradually, easing into the familiar stretches of his favored routine. He tried to clear his mind and sink into the peace of repetitive extended breathing, but Blaine's affirmation the previous night still weighed heavily on him, calling up memories that he'd been examining for the better part of the last three months: Blaine bowing to his grandfather's coffin one last time; Kurt's fingers rubbing back and forth in the crook of Blaine's elbow as they left the church; the words Blaine had said as they sat with their backs to the trunk of the cherry tree in Blaine's back yard, ties loosened and shirt sleeves rolled up in an attempt to combat the mid-afternoon June heat.

"_Let's go somewhere. No, wait, let's go _everywhere._ He left me the R.V., so let's use it. Take a road trip with me."_

Kurt, who had been systematically shredding a still-damp tissue in his lap, had barely been surprised by the suggestion. Blaine was always looking for a place to call home—he'd spent their last year of college across the Atlantic interning under Oscar-winning director Dmitri Serafino, in fact— but that he'd come up with the idea a mere six days after his return to Maine had thrown Kurt for a loop, so much so that he had found himself agreeing with barely a thought.

And now, here he was on his last morning in Maine, waiting for Blaine to return and provide an arrow to his compass. As he transitioned from a standing half forward bend into a firefly pose, the exertion causing sweat to bead at his temples, Kurt wondered if it was a smart decision to put so much of his stock into Blaine's nomadic hands. Maybe there was some part of him that still needed convincing after all, never mind that they were already almost past the point of no return.

_No,_ he thought, exhaling to a count of five. _No, I'm here, and I'm doing this._

He moved smoothly back into standing half forward before switching through to downward-facing dog, relaxing into the stretch in his back and thighs. He'd forgotten how much he enjoyed this—he'd been too busy enjoying the benefits of his own flexibility instead.

"Well, that's quite a view."

Kurt twisted to the side, looking back past his own legs at where Blaine stood just inside the door, curls sticking damply to his forehead and the front of his heather gray Bowdoin tee dark with sweat. Kurt hummed non-committally, but wiggled his ass from side to side all the same. "I work hard for this ass."

"I know you do," Blaine said as he edged past, Kurt sinking and pulling back into upward-facing dog. "But you're really working out to Bowie?"

"I'll have you know that this song is a classic, and Bowie is one of the true artists of our time."

"Our parents' time, maybe," Blaine replied, leaning against the unit below the sink and draining the remaining contents of his blue Camelbak. "Since when did you start doing yoga again, anyway?"

"It was a slow summer," Kurt said, releasing the pose and moving to stand—he'd been almost finished, and the quiet was broken.

"Didn't look that slow the day I got back from London," Blaine quipped, and Kurt glared through the rising heat in his cheeks, incensed at how efficiently Blaine could make him blush.

"I think you mean the day you started cramping my style again," he shot back, and bent to retrieve his mat from the floor.

"Come on, Kurt. You must already have been pretty hard up if you finally gave in to Pick-Up Line Guy," Blaine continued, stretching his arms out over his head with a satisfied smirk. Kurt paused halfway through rolling up the mat, watching the muscles shift beneath Blaine's skin, and he felt it all over again: the tug, tug, tug of dull want that had been lying mostly dormant somewhere in the bottom of his gut ever since the day Blaine had come home, broader and better defined and more worldly. Every single day since, Kurt had been asking himself how one person could change so much in the space of a year. "What was it that finally did it for you? Was it the library card one?"

"Blaine—"

"What about, 'People call me Chandler, but you can call me Tonight'?"

"Blaine, we've had this conversation a million times already. Can you just drop it?" Kurt asked hotly, tucking his mat under his arm. Really, it was just that Chandler had happened to be at the same Pride parade and the same post-parade party as Kurt had been, and somehow dancing had morphed into staying out all night, into breakfast at Brunswick Diner, into finding themselves stretched out on Kurt's bed as early-morning summer sun filtered through the drapes. "It's not like I got to finish the job anyway, what with you barging in on us."

"Hand or blow?"

"Do you know the difference, or should I draw you a diagram? Though, you know, practical demonstrations are always fun. And if I'm as 'hard up' as you say…"

Blaine finally raised his hands in surrender, acquiescing, "Fine, fine, you win!"

"Good," Kurt said, nodding. "Now go take a shower; I can smell you from here."

Blaine saluted him with a wink, and soon enough Kurt was left alone in the living area, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth as Blaine's voice singing _Golden Years_ carried over the shower.

* * *

It was noon before they drove into Hampton, and Kurt had been watching the shadows grow longer and darker ahead of the R.V. as the sun shone ever brighter. The windows were rolled down, the fuzzy black dice hung from the mirror swinging back and forth in the cool breeze that whipped through the cab, and Kurt reclined in his seat, one hand on the steering wheel and his elbow resting in the window frame. Blaine's seat was tipped as far back as it would go, his crossed ankles resting on the dashboard, and he hummed quietly along to the radio.

Kurt's lips curved into an involuntary and easy smile as he ran his fingers back through his hair, shaded eyes flicking towards the GPS even though they'd taken enough trips as kids to Hampton beach that he could have driven the route in his sleep. It felt good to finally be out of Maine; until they'd crossed the state line, it had felt like he was simply gone for the evening, visiting friends in the next town over. His lingering apprehension notwithstanding, he had to admit that finally leaving home behind for a while was probably going to be a good thing—he was twenty-two years old now, and a college graduate wanting to work in the film industry. He would always have needed to relocate.

"We're almost there," Blaine said absently, twisting to drop his feet to the floor and pulling his seat upright before reaching into the spacious glove compartment to retrieve Kurt's folder. "Everything's in state order, right?"

"Are you questioning my organizational skills?"

"Never," Blaine answered with a light chuckle, flipping past the first few pages of the thick blue folder that Kurt had stuffed full with print-outs and reservations, until he found the one for their two-day spot on the waterfront at Hampton Beach State Park. "I can't believe it's been so long since we were last here. Remember? With those ridiculous sandwiches you made?"

"That was a good day," Kurt said fondly, nodding even as he recalled his disastrous first attempt at croque-monsieur. "Seven years, though."

"I know; it's insane. That was the day before, right?"

"The day before what?"

Blaine rolled his eyes and turned in his seat, folder splayed across his lap. "The day before we came out to each other. You know, when we almost made out before we remembered that it'd be totally weird?"

"Totally weird," Kurt agreed automatically, pushing his sunglasses back up his nose and returning both hands to the steering wheel. He could feel Blaine's eyes on him as he did so, and he couldn't help but shift in his seat. It was one of their many unwritten rules that they didn't bring up the one time that they had almost kissed; it really was just too weird to think about, and if Kurt was one hundred percent honest with himself, the more he thought about it, the more he would begin envisioning the lines blurring between them. It was safer for both his sanity and his sex drive that he didn't dwell on it too long. Despite all of his protests to April, he spent enough time surreptitiously checking out his best friend as it was. He cleared his throat, and unnecessarily asked, "The paperwork's all there, right?"

"Looks like," Blaine replied, pulling the sheet of paper from its plastic pocket and scanning it as Kurt continued guiding the R.V. along Ocean Boulevard. "Meet you down there?"

"Sure."

A few minutes later, Blaine was closing the passenger side door to the cab behind him, and Kurt eyed the camcorder he'd left on his seat for a moment before pulling back out onto the main road. There was an old Stereophonics song playing on the radio—not so old as to be considered part of their "old stuff" but old enough—and, fleetingly, Kurt opened his mouth to sing along. As soon as he did so, his throat constricted and it felt as if his tongue had swollen to twice its size, lying thick and useless in his mouth—just as it did every time he tried to sing outside of his room on a day where the house was empty. He shook himself, stuffing memories of singing The Dishes Song with Mom back into a box and taping it haphazardly shut. He set his jaw, flexed his fingers around the steering wheel, and drove on.

Being a mid-September Monday, the R.V. park was all but deserted, and an air of tranquility accompanied the never-silent beach quiet as he pulled into their reserved site and cut the engine, sinking back into his seat and breathing in the familiar scent of Hampton beach saltwater. The first lungful uncoupled with the smell of Bois de Voilette always made him ache, the hollow cut deep into his chest growing infinitesimally wider for a second that never failed to feel like falling, and he found himself rubbing the dip at the base of his neck absently, the chain of his Saint Christopher catching on his fingertips. He pulled it from where it lay beneath the collar of his fitted, short-sleeved black shirt and studied it closely, resting the disc in his palm so that it could catch the light of the lunchtime sun. The design was simple: a smooth silver circle bordering an engraving of a man with a walking stick carrying a child on his back, nothing outwardly religious about it.

Kurt felt ashamed for having been so surprised at receiving such a thoughtful gift from Blaine; over the course of their year apart, the number of little things Blaine would do for him had been assimilated into Kurt's own life, and by the time Blaine returned, Kurt had begun to take for granted the independence and self-reliance he had made great efforts to carve out for himself. After the first three months of barely-returned Skype calls, and emails that went unanswered for days—and though it wasn't exactly conducive to keeping his best friend close, even when said friend was three thousand miles away and busy almost eighteen hours a day—Kurt's sense of self-preservation had kicked in and he had simply learned how to be alone without being lonely.

And then Blaine had come home, sadness over the reason for his return weighing on him like a boulder and the very slightest of London affectations in his voice. He had come home, and suddenly there was Aztec couscous, and a blanket covering him when he started awake at 2 a.m., having fallen asleep halfway through the movie they had been watching, and the DVDs on his shelf that he'd been meaning to get to were back in alphabetical order. Kurt had barely known what to do with himself, struck dumb with the fear that he needed Blaine much more than he'd ever thought before their symbiotic relationship had been stripped away from him.

With a sigh, he tucked the pendant beneath his collar once more, unbuckled his seatbelt, and grabbed the camcorder from the passenger seat. Blaine's laptop was hibernating on the diner-style table at the far end of the couch, and as Kurt seated himself on one of the high-backed, flock-print chairs, he connected the camcorder up using the USB cable that was still plugged into the laptop from the previous night's charging.

The footage that Blaine had been taking out of the window was sparse, clips here and there of passing cars and scenery rushing by, with music omnipresent in the background and snatches of idle drive-time conversation. Kurt transferred it all to the hard drive and wiped the camcorder's SD card. He and Blaine had plans for the footage they collected, plans that involved the final result of a documentary movie that would net them an Academy Award, though they hadn't yet figured out the point of the documentary itself. Details.

Logging into the park's free Wi-Fi network, the signal strong even from the oceanfront pavilion where his parents' wedding had taken place, Kurt opened a new incognito window and visited his blog. Beneath the legend _100 Days of Kurt Hummel_ were only two entries; a short placeholder entry, and the text entry he had made the morning of his birthday. He'd promised himself no looking back, and so he didn't waste any time re-reading what he'd written, simply clicked through for a new video post, choosing the instant capture option. It was about a five-minute walk from the site office to their where he'd parked; he had time.

"It's day one, and we've just arrived in Hampton," Kurt began brightly, looking directly into the laptop's tiny but powerful webcam. "The sky's blue and the sun's high, which can mean only two things: two days on the beach, and lots of sunblock."

Kurt paused momentarily, gaze faltering and slipping to the mirror image of himself on the screen, and he reminded himself that, other than whatever followers he may pick up along the way, this blog was completely private. No one knew about it, not even April. It was his space to document his thoughts and feelings, something that he could call entirely his own. In light of the comeback his sense of codependence had made, he needed something that was just his, and this blog was it.

"Leaving home last night was… It was hard. Not just the goodbye part—I always knew that that part would suck—but knowing whether I was really doing the right thing. I think when we got to Arundel and I brought it up, Blaine realized how much he was asking of me to just take off with him. Don't get me wrong, I'm… I'm thrilled that we're doing this together. I am. But this isn't just some day trip to Vermont or even a week's vacation to the west coast. This is three months of nothing but the road and each other, and I'm a little bit terrified that home won't ever feel like home again. And a little bit more terrified that it'll feel too much like home and I'll never want to leave.

"Despite all that, though, I really am glad to be here. I mean, this place just has so many memories for the both of us. We both have family history here, and so many weekends spent down here since we were just kids, building sandcastles with seaweed-fortified battlements, right up 'til just before Blaine left for London. It's one of our places, and nowhere else would have felt right."

Kurt smiled in spite of himself, almost feeling like he should be lying on a leather couch. He didn't lay himself bare like this for anyone—except perhaps Blaine—and knowing that this video diary was just for him… There was an odd sense of freedom in it.

He knew he had to cut his stream of consciousness short, however, when he happened to glance through the windshield and saw Blaine approaching. Turning back to the screen, he said, "Well, better get going. The water waits for no man."

"Who're you talking to?" Blaine asked, stepping up into the R.V. and pushing his sunglasses up on top of his head, regarding Kurt with a curious look.

"No one, just… Thinking out loud," Kurt replied, tilting the laptop lid downward after closing the browser when he saw the upload confirmation.

"Anything interesting?"

"Always."

Blaine chuckled, and dropped the paperwork he was holding onto the passenger seat. "So, I figure we can take the laptop to the beach with us and watch our movie. And god, I'm _so_ hungry. I passed, like, thirty restaurants on the way here and everything smelled fantastic. Are you hungry?"

"Yeah, actually," Kurt said, his stomach grumbling quietly at the mention of food. He slid out of the booth and stood, the prospect of getting out of the R.V. and stretching his legs a happy one. "What are you in the mood for?"

"I was thinking Ocean Wok, since it's close. The calamari…"

Kurt groaned aloud, mouth already beginning to water. "Excellent choice."

"Or, you know, we could head up to the Urchin. See if they've added anything new to the menu lately," Blaine continued in a mischievous tone, and Kurt didn't miss the gleam of a tease in his eyes.

"Blaine, no. _Anything_ but croque-monsieur."

**Distance: 95.6 miles**

* * *

**Follow Kurt's blog at 100daysofkurt dot tumblr dot com!**


	4. A Curious Kind of Closeness (Vermont)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 004: Thursday 20 September, 2012  
****A Curious Kind of Closeness (Vermont)****  
**

"_Kurt, seriously? You've _never_ seen _Beetlejuice?"

"…_No?"_

"_Okay. We're watching _Beetlejuice,_ and because it's Tim Burton, you're not allowed a veto."_

* * *

The farther away from Maine they drove, the more Blaine felt a sense of dust settling around him. Granted, there was only actually one state between them and the place he'd called home, but being on the road was freeing in a way he hadn't quite expected. He'd been able to make something of a home in London, but the living situation had been sticky for a while, having to get used to the quirks of roommates that were all the polar opposite of Kurt. Since the day his dad had left seven years earlier, Blaine had simply felt adrift and anchorless, no matter the lengths he went to in order to find that elusive sense of belonging he only ever felt around his best friend. There were no good first impressions to make, no façades to keep up, no pretenses or misconceptions. It was easy, and no matter the distance that stretched ahead of them with its miles of untapped potential, he felt a descending peacefulness.

Yet he couldn't sleep.

Trying not to toss and turn too much lest he wake Kurt, who was stretched out next to him in the recovery position, he had been counting sheep for nearly an hour. They had only gotten halfway through the movie before Kurt's yawns had grown so frequent that his eyes had begun to water, and had decided to just go to sleep.

"I know it's your turn, but unless you're planning on carrying me out there, the idea of me moving right now is pretty much a non-starter," Kurt had said as he sank back against the pillows, one arm thrown over his eyes. Blaine had simply laughed, prodded him in the ribs, and taken his laptop out to the living area. By the time he had returned, Kurt's breathing had slowed and deepened. Blaine had watched him from the doorway for a long moment, biting his lip with the indecision, before caving and crawling beneath the covers, turning onto his front and burying his arms beneath the pillow.

He had thought about their two days in Vermont: the giddy excitement he had felt at finally getting to visit the Ben & Jerry's factory like he'd never been allowed on family trips growing up; the way Kurt had bounced on the balls of his feet when they'd walked past a sign for Apple-y Ever After and when Blaine had suggested they split a hot fudge sundae in the scoop shop; the beautiful and history-rich art at Shelburne Museum; the long walk they had taken up to the Waterbury dam and back, debating shooting with film versus digital—contrary to his technology-savvy, early adopter nature, Kurt was a staunch advocate of the classic art of film, whereas Blaine had always preferred the level of detail that could be achieved with digital. It was one thing that they could never agree on, but for which they would one day have to find a compromise if they ever wanted to work together.

The clock beneath the wall-mounted TV at the end of the bed read 2:37 a.m., and Blaine sighed quietly, finally giving in and getting out of bed with slow, careful movements. Sliding the bedroom door shut behind him, he padded out into the living area and collapsed onto the couch, wincing at the cold leather against the backs of his thighs, bare save for his boxer shorts. Squinting against the sudden burst of light as he called his laptop out of hibernation, he reached up to switch on one of the spotlights over the couch, deciding that it was probably time to update his blog.

He had started it on a whim, signing up the day before the gig at The Cannery, and sent the link to a few friends in London with whom he had been exchanging semi-regular emails since being back stateside. He knew he'd be lucky to even get a reliable Wi-Fi connection every day, and he was a damn good pen pal—short, phone-typed responses simply wouldn't do, so he figured that a blog would be a decent substitute. He uploaded pictures and small video clips using his phone app every day, but it had taken until now for him to find a window of time large enough to sit and order his thoughts enough to write about them.

_Greetings from Little River State Park, Waterbury, VT,_ he wrote once he had signed into the park's network. _I'm a little afraid that all this excitement is already proving too much for me, since it's nearly 3 a.m. and, to quote the artist, I can't get no sleep._

_Things so far are great—the road really is a fantastic place to be, especially when you've got a kick-ass playlist that includes plenty of Pink. Kurt and I (see, Lucy, I can use proper grammar outside of merry England!) have had a fairly chilled-out trip so far, hanging out at Hampton Beach and doing a few things around Vermont we've both wanted to do for years but never had the chance. I'm sure we both looked right at home with the rest of the kids on our tour of the Ben & Jerry's factory, all wide eyes, gasps and giggles. It's a wonder we didn't start whispering behind our hands or, God forbid, passing notes._

_If any of you guys ever get the chance—though, really, why you'd choose Vermont out of all the places in the U.S. you could visit would be something of a mystery—I'd definitely recommend checking out Shelburne museum if only for the folk art collection. The level of detail and craftsmanship in some of the pieces there is truly breathtaking, particularly the Fire Engine weather vane. I completely geeked out over it and I don't even care._

_I'll keep this short so as not to bore you too much, though rest assured that you'll probably wind up sick of the sight of Boston, Salem, and Provincetown over the next three days—we're heading for Massachusetts tomorrow morning (it's not tomorrow until you've slept)._

_Hoping you're all well and not too rain-miserable (did I mention that we're having some really beautiful weather here?)._

After a quick read-through for any glaring grammatical errors—Lucy would tear him a new one if she found him slipping back into old ways just because he was back in the States—he hit Publish, closed the tab, and sat back on the couch.

"Why are you awake right now? It's ridiculous o'clock," Kurt's voice, gravelly and sleep-rough, came from the now open bedroom doorway.

"Old man," Blaine teased him, running a hand through his mussed curls as he took in Kurt's messy hair, bleary eyes, and the soft blanket wrapped around him. "I couldn't sleep."

"Why didn't you wake me up?"

"Kurt, you're scary enough when you wake up in the morning, let alone in the middle of the night," Blaine said, dropping his head to the back of the couch, and Kurt sleepily raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm serious! You're legitimately terrifying. You open your eyes and all I can see is fire, pitchforks and death."

"Cute," Kurt huffed. He shuffled slowly towards him and collapsed onto the couch, leaning over the center arm and dropping his head against Blaine's shoulder. Flicking his eyes toward the computer to make sure that he actually had closed out of his blog—something he couldn't quite put his finger on had made him keep it a secret from Kurt, from everyone apart from his friends in London, actually—he closed the lid and shifted downward, Kurt's forehead pressing warmly against the skin of his neck. Kurt cleared his throat. "Did you want to finish the movie? Or… I could make some warm milk."

Blaine wrinkled his nose. "Warm milk? We're not kids anymore, Kurt."

"Shut up; you know it's delicious," Kurt protested, sitting up and arching his back, the pale expanse of his neck fully exposed as he tipped his head.

Blaine swallowed thickly, flashes of Kurt's now daily yoga routine rushing unbidden to the forefront of his mind. Something between them had changed since he had come back from London, the subtlest of shifts in their dynamic that had somehow given everything a humming undercurrent of a feeling he couldn't pin down. Mostly, he chalked it up to the fact that they were simply settling back into being them after spending a year apart, but the longer it wore on, the more he wondered if there was more to it.

The moment passed when Kurt added with a wicked grin, "And growing boys need their calcium."

"Not a growing boy," Blaine grumbled both indignantly and regretfully. Kurt simply swatted at his thigh and moved over to the R.V.'s narrow electric stove, retrieving ingredients and a small pan from the cupboard above. He paused in front of the fridge as he went to get the milk, shaking his head and chuckling despite himself at Blaine's—genius, in his opinion—reworked Jumanji quote using the refrigerator magnets: _In the jungle you must wait, until your turn to masturbate._

"So did you want to finish the movie?" Kurt asked a few minutes later, rolling his neck from side to side as he stirred vanilla and nutmeg into the pan.

"Sure," Blaine answered, pulling the laptop back toward him and opening VLC. "But how and when did you manage to stock the cupboards so full? I didn't see you bringing in any of that stuff."

"I'm a stealth ninja and you'll never learn my secrets, Anderson," Kurt replied smoothly, shooting him the patented Hummel Eyebrow Arch—and Blaine knew much better than to argue with that.

He couldn't deny, upon tasting the first sip of warm milk he'd had in years, that it was indeed delicious. Kurt quickly rinsed the pan and spoon he'd used before returning to the couch, wrapping himself up in his blanket and dropping his head to Blaine's shoulder once more. Blaine skipped back a couple of scenes, to where Catherine O'Hara and Winona Ryder were arguing in their gaudily-decorated kitchen, and drank deeply from his mug after pressing play.

A few seconds later, Kurt reached up and quickly swiped his thumb across the skin above Blaine's top lip, then pulled it back and sucked it into his mouth, all without taking his eyes off the screen. Blaine froze for a moment, trying to reconcile being at once confused and oddly turned on.

"What was that?"

"Milk mustache," Kurt said simply. "You always get them."

Blaine couldn't quite relax after that, the remainder of the movie washing through him as he tried not to think too much about the warmth he could feel from Kurt even through the blanket separating them—he wasn't about to let a little sleep deprivation make a creep out of him. That's all it was, after all—it was a little too early in the trip to be calling it cabin fever—and it wasn't long before he was resting his head atop Kurt's, determinedly focusing back on the movie and not the softness of Kurt's thick hair against his cheek.

It was just Kurt, for God's sake.

* * *

**Distance: 347.8 miles**

**Follow Blaine's blog at 100daysofblaine dot tumblr dot com!**


	5. A Hand Unheld (Massachusetts)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 007: Sunday 23 September, 2012  
****A Hand Unheld (Massachusetts)****  
**

"_But it's _Jaws_. It made history!"_

"_Unless you want me clinging to you like some sort of barnacle, veto."_

"_Alright, fine. _Mona Lisa Smile_ it is."_

* * *

**Kurt (11:21am)** – IMG_20122209_  
**April (11:23am)** – Rude. Where are you guys and why do you both look so attractive right now? I'm still in my sweats.  
**Kurt (11:24am)** – That was yesterday, walking along Charles River in Boston. Massachusetts is beautiful! And hey, you deserve a lazy day. I saw the video from last night, you guys were fantastic!  
**April (11:25am)** – Are you kidding me? It was fucking ridiculous. Damn Hugh and his obsession with obscure British indie bands.  
**Kurt (11:26am)** – For what it's worth, you sounded great. Will you guys be in Boston at all?  
**April (11:26am)** – Jen's trying to get us a gig at some bar in the North End. Why?  
**Kurt (11:27am)** – Make sure you go to Mike's Pastry for cannolis. But for the love of god, hide the fucking box when you're out.  
**April (11:30am)** – …am I just supposed to guess why?  
**Kurt (11:30am)** – Just trust me.

Blaine's eyes had been fleetingly coming to rest on Kurt at intervals since the previous day by the river, and Kurt wished more than anything as he turned his gaze out of the window for the umpteenth time that he could narrow his field of vision to nothing but the asphalt ahead of them and simply not notice.

But he couldn't do that any more than he could forget Blaine's stupid, throwaway comment. It was nothing, and Kurt _felt_ stupid for being so fixated on it, and what he needed most was not to be shown a living, breathing reflection of what he saw every time he looked in the mirror: a kid playing dress-up in an old man's skin, a faintly haunted look in his eyes that spoke of too many things never dealt with, regarding himself with pity as he arranged his armor. And with pity was exactly how Blaine was looking at him.

"_You sound like your mother, you know," Kurt said fondly, in response to Blaine using an old phrase of his mom's._

"_It's getting worse," Blaine admitted somewhat sheepishly. "I guess there's something to that old saying, after all."_

"_That we're destined to become our parents?"_

"_That we're destined to become our mothers."_

And just like that, Kurt had stiffened, the tension setting his spine arrow-straight quicker than the crack of a whip, and his head had spun from how quickly he had been suddenly eight years old all over again, the light from Blaine's living room spilling out into the hallway, a yellow rectangle framing his dad as he had knelt down in front of Kurt and taken his shoulders. His grip on the blue and white string around his pastry box had tightened until it cut into the creases of his fingers, and he had closed his eyes, inhaling slowly.

"I swear to god, I want to shoot everywhere in this state," Kurt said, pocketing his phone and settling back into his seat his left leg crossed over his right. He picked up the camcorder from the dash, the plastic casing warm from where the midday sun was bearing oppressively down upon the R.V., and flipped out the screen to go through some of Blaine's footage from the previous day. He had to do something to break the tension.

"It certainly has something," Blaine agreed, and Kurt scrolled back through the footage until he found the panoramic view of Charles River that Blaine had taken from their vantage point by Harvard Bridge. Even with such a state-of-the-art camcorder, there was no capturing the full magic of the blue-backed skyline and the sun sparkling out over the water—it was breathtaking, cinematic, a place where anything could happen. A place where he wanted to _make_ things happen. The location was a cinematographer's dream.

"Doesn't it? I feel like I've had this blank canvas put in front of me. I don't know why they don't use this place more, there's so much untapped potential."

"I can see you there. Back in Boston," Blaine said lightly, absently tapping his fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of _Bittersweet Symphony_ pouring through the speakers.

"You can?" Kurt asked, trying for nonchalance.

"You suit cities; that's all I'm saying. Don't think I've forgotten the Philadelphia trip."

"I thought we agreed never to talk about the Philadelphia trip."

"Well, you know, before the whole public indecency thing… I've never really seen you like that. It was like you came alive; I don't know how else to put it. And here even more so. You're all color."

Kurt chuckled and shook his head, trying not to notice the way his lips seemed to strain to keep hold of the smile when Blaine's eyes caught his across the center console, and the mirth faded back into that same hesitant, considering look.

"Kurt, about yesterday… I wasn't—" Blaine began, his voice holding the same regretful tone as it had the day before, right up until he'd been interrupted by two petite brunettes, holding hands and glancing at the Mike's Pastry boxes he and Kurt had been carrying, the ones that contained the second halves of the cannolis they'd been unable to finish in one sitting. The girls—tourists, there for the weekend from London—had easily been the twelfth or thirteenth time he and Blaine had been stopped and asked for directions, even as far away as they were, and while Kurt was busy trying to keep himself from screaming, Blaine had directed them to the nearest train station, telling them to get off the T at Haymarket and head to Hanover Street.

"Blaine, it's fine. Really," Kurt said, cutting him off and reaching over to cover Blaine's hand with his own. He shot him a tight smile, wishing and hoping and praying that Blaine would just let it go, file it under the list of things that Kurt didn't want to talk about, and move on.

Blaine returned his eyes to the road, nodded after a brief pause, and as he began turning off the freeway, said, "okay."

A few quiet minutes later, they were parked in the small beach parking lot behind Devon's on Commercial Street in Provincetown, the scent and sound of the ocean waves chasing after them as they made their way around to the front of the restaurant. Kurt took in the weathered white siding of the building next door, the paint no doubt battered from the wood by the salty sea air. A few couples were seated outside beneath the black awning, and Kurt couldn't help but let his eyes linger a fraction too long on two boys sharing a stack of blueberry pancakes, proudly holding hands across the table. When one of them looked up at him over his boyfriend's shoulder as Kurt and Blaine passed, strands of red hair falling over his eyes, Kurt offered him a small smile and continued on inside.

"Did you see the two boys holding hands out front?" he asked Blaine, when enough silence—save for the old Donavon Frankenreiter song playing inside the restaurant—had passed since placing their orders that it began to feel uncomfortable, like Blaine was just itching to bring it all back up again so that he could try to fix it or something equally as frustrating.

"Adorable, right?" Blaine answered, sliding his hand palm-up across the tablecloth and waggling his fingers.

"I'm not holding hands with you," Kurt said, pulling his napkin from the table and setting it across his lap simply to give his hands something to do other than give in to the urge to grab onto Blaine and hold tight. He took a small sip of his iced tea, hoping that the cold would help clear his mind, because this was beginning to prove problematic—it was _Blaine_, for Christ's sake. Blaine, his best friend of sixteen years and emphatically nothing more—feelings never led anywhere good, and as Blaine himself always said, sex just complicated things. Though when Kurt started putting 'Blaine' and 'sex' in the same train of thought, he didn't know.

"Aw, Kurt," Blaine whined, giving Kurt his best wounded puppy expression. Kurt turned his eyes upward, concentrating on the exposed white beams of the ceiling and the checked, cylindrical light fixtures suspended over the tables. "Come on, everyone else is doing it."

"Those are the exact words you said to me in Philly, and look how that turned out," Kurt said archly, glancing around at the other patrons. Granted, there were a smattering of couples, straight and gay, throughout the busy restaurant who were holding hands, but they didn't exactly form a majority. "And besides, not _everyone_ else is doing it."

"But they could if they wanted, and isn't that the point?"

"Can we just talk about how you've already started making plans to retire here, instead? Because I saw the look on your face down by the beach."

Finally withdrawing his hand with a sigh, Blaine shifted his gaze from side to side and fiddled with his fork. "Not true."

"_So_ true, Blaine Anderson. Come on, you don't think about what it's going to be like to be old?"

"All the time."

"I knew it."

"I think it's going to be fantastic. Who really wants to be forever young?"

"Ask an old person."

Blaine snorted. "I guess. But picture it, Kurt—a lighthouse down by the beach, a little artist's colony…"

"Sounds pretty perfect," Kurt said, "and just like you."

"Well, you'll be there too, right? Someone needs to be in charge of exhibitions, because my organizational skills are for shit."

Kurt laughed, his first genuine laugh since the day before, and felt himself relax back into his seat, the residual tension draining from the top down, until he could feel it soaking through the bottoms of his shoes and down into the floor to dissipate completely. "Of course I'll be there. Someone has to bring the fabulous," he said, leaning in conspiratorially for a moment.

"Eggs benedict?"

Kurt glanced up at the waitress he hadn't even noticed approaching and nodded—the smell of hollandaise sauce intermingling with applewood smoked bacon was heavenly, and he swallowed thickly as his mouth began to water. He hadn't realized quite how hungry he was until the food was placed in front of him, and suddenly he felt ravenous.

"So what's the plan for tonight?" Blaine asked, tearing off a small piece of his French toast with his fork after the waitress had discreetly slipped their bill onto the table and excused herself.

"Go to the site, watch our movie, get ready, and then head to A-House," Kurt answered succinctly.

"Ah, so _that's_ the real reason you brought the leather," Blaine teased. "The Halloween costume was just a convenient cover."

"The place has _three_ bars, Blaine. And if you don't watch it, I might have to tie you up and leave you there for the bears to feast on."

"But…" Blaine trailed off with a look of faux-puzzlement. "How did you know I like that?"

Kurt just laughed, shook his head, and took another bite of his eggs. Despite the little moments of temptation, the curiosity to see what it would be like, Blaine was still just Blaine. Dorky, charming, affable Blaine: his best friend and nothing more.

* * *

**Distance: 683.8 miles**


	6. Melody in Flames (Rhode Island)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 009: Tuesday 25 September, 2012  
****Melody in Flames (Rhode Island)****  
**

"Meet Joe Black._ I know it's a little long, but—"_

"_It's three hours, Kurt. The only other movies that long that I've been able to sit still for are _Titanic_ and the _Lord of the Rings_ movies."_

"_Trust me, Blaine. It's so worth it."_

* * *

Something had changed.

It had been a little over a week since they had left Brunswick, and Blaine could already feel the shift that was taking place. Something he couldn't put a name to had burrowed beneath the layers of his skin and taken root, was spreading outward, and the longer he tried to follow the thread back, the more lost in his own history with Kurt he became.

An intelligent person might have said it started the day he caught Kurt with Chandler, saw the way his head was thrown back against the pillows as Chandler mouthed his way down the broad planes of Kurt's chest. It was a flashbulb, burned bright into his mind's eye as if he'd been staring at a lamp for too long, the impression of it blurring before his eyes as his gaze slid sideways. An intelligent person might have said that the reason he wanted Kurt to take his arm or his hand as they walked down the street was a sign that he wanted more from Kurt than just his friendship, that he shouldn't fight something that felt about as natural as taking breath. An intelligent person might have said that it was the push he needed to finally see this man differently, open his eyes to the Kurt-shaped figure that had been in front of him for years, only he'd been staring at the sun too long to take note.

Blaine decided that it was just a sex thing. And that was fine. He could put the sex out of his mind, because sex only ever complicated things. He didn't even need to have _had_ it—aside from those two fumbling encounters back in London—to know that. Just look at what happened to his parents when his father had decided that his mother wasn't enough for him anymore, that none of them were.

No, what he and Kurt had was special, sacred, the kind of friendship that just didn't come along every day, and both of them worked hard to keep it exactly what it was.

So why did he feel that this thing, whatever it was, that had begun to simmer in his gut was only the beginning?

"Blaine."

"Hmm?"

"Have you been listening to a word I've been saying?" Kurt asked exasperatedly, burying his hands in his jacket pockets as they continued their ambling pace around downtown Providence, walking through City Hall Park towards the river.

"Sorry, I was just…" Blaine trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence. He shook his head. "What were you saying?"

"I was _saying_ that there are all these movies where Death appears as a person, an entity, but what about Life?" Kurt asked. "Where are the stories where Life appears and coaxes someone back from the edge, or wakes someone up to all of the possibilities that it has to offer?"

Blaine considered the notion for a moment. "I think that's kind of our job, you know? We're the ones who're living, who're supposed to seize the day, and do all of it in the face of everything else."

"Hmm. Maybe you're right," Kurt conceded. "Did you like it? You didn't really say anything when it was over."

"Yeah, it was great. A little slow in parts, but I felt like that was kind of necessary, you know?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Kurt agreed. "It didn't really get to that point where the story got diluted by the length, either."

"I mean, I felt like they could have wrapped it up in maybe two-and-a-half hours tops, if some of the actors hadn't taken so long to deliver their lines," Blaine said, though the words felt harsh as soon as he said them. It was a problem of his, actually, how every time he watched a movie he dissected it in his mind, broke it into its component parts and thought about how he would have done things differently were he the director.

"At least they managed to do it without stuttering or looking constipated, which is more than I can say for the _Twilight_ saga," Kurt countered, and Blaine couldn't help but chuckle.

"What was your favorite part?" he asked.

"Any time Brad Pitt wasn't wearing a shirt," Kurt said wistfully.

"I'm being serious."

Kurt leveled him with his best sardonic look. "So am I."

"Okay, favorite _line,_ then," Blaine tried—at some points during the movie, he'd wanted to sit up and punch the air at some of the lines in the script. The writing, at least, was stellar.

"His one candle wish," Kurt answered after a few moments, eyes fixed straight ahead of him. "That he wants his friends and family to wake up one morning and say, 'I don't want anything more'. Wouldn't that be amazing?"

"Never wanting anything? I don't know. Going after the things we want… It's what drives us, what defines us."

"No, that's not what defines us. What defines us is the choice of whether or not we do go after the things that we want, because either way, your life ends up changing," Kurt said thoughtfully, and Blaine had to admit that there was hardly room for argument.

"I'm not sure if I'll ever be done wanting things. Done… baking," Blaine said.

"That's a good thing, B. Trust me," Kurt replied.

"How so?"

"You're done baking when you settle."

"Like… Settle down with a family?" Blaine asked, and Kurt shook his head, focusing on some point in the middle distance.

"When you settle for all you think you're ever going to get out of life. That's the timer going off," Kurt said. "Anyway. What was _your_ favorite line?"

"Oh, uh…" Blaine began, reaching up to scratch at the back of his neck as if he were thinking. Really, it was to buy himself time to remember anything other than his favorite line of the entire movie, spoken just sixteen minutes in by Anthony Hopkins himself. He couldn't say that that was his favorite line; what would Kurt think? What would he _say?_ Kurt would know. He would know straight away what had been going through Blaine's head for the past couple of days and then things would just become super-awkward, and they had over three months to go. No, he had to think of something else. The problem was that he couldn't. All he could remember were the words that had hooked him:

"_I know it's a cornball thing, but love is passion. Obsession. Someone you can't live without. I say fall head over heels. Find someone you can love like crazy, and who'll love you the same way back. How do you find 'em? Well, you forget your head and listen to your heart. I'm not hearing any heart. Because the truth is, honey, there's no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love, well, you haven't lived a life at all. But you have to try, because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived."_

"Blaine, seriously, what's up with you tonight?" Kurt asked, stopping to face him with concern in his eyes. "Are you coming down with something?"

Blaine swallowed. _"Don't blow smoke up my ass; you'll ruin my autopsy,"_ he said, with as genuine a smile as he could muster.

Kurt looked puzzled for a moment, and then the corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. "Of all the great lines in that movie, you pick that one?"

Blaine shrugged, and Kurt shook his head.

"I would've thought you'd pick something like… Hey, do you hear that?" Kurt asked, inclining his head towards the direction of the river. Blaine mirrored the motion, meeting Kurt's eyes when he also heard it—music, faint and uplifting.

"Free gig?" he asked.

Kurt lifted his head, delicately sniffing the air, and a slow grin curved along the line of his lips. "Tell me you can smell smoke, too," he said, his eyes sparkling in the yellow glow of the streetlamps bordering the park, lighting their way to the water.

A quick, deep inhale and Blaine was nodding—a fragrant, aromatic scent of wood smoke was barely detectable but just there, undercutting the smell of the freshly cut park grass. Kurt grinned even wider, tucked his fingers into the crook of Blaine's elbow and then they were running, faster and faster, towards the river. Kurt's grip on his arm faltered but their pace didn't, and Blaine called out, "Kurt, what's going on?"

"I heard about this but I didn't think there was going to be a show today!" Kurt called over his shoulder, beckoning Blaine onward with a wave of his hand. "You'll see when we get there!"

It seemed like no time at all that they were coming to an abrupt halt on the bridge just past Exchange Terrace, Blaine slotting himself into the teeming crowd next to Kurt. A band was set up behind them on Citizens Plaza, the song they were playing one that Blaine recognized from one of Lucy's study playlists—_Ashes,_ he thought with a brief, nostalgic smile. It soared over the heads of the people gathered to watch what was happening out on the water: heat, and light, and fire.

Stately, torch-lit gondolas glided along the water, past floating braziers that burned and crackled brightly in the night. Leaning slightly over the edge of the bridge, Blaine could feel the heat on his face and he could see the long line of bonfires stretching off into the distance, thousands of spectators lining the banks of the river and all lit up by the flames.

Jostled by people wanting to get closer to the edge, he moved closer to Kurt, standing half behind him with one hand resting either side of Kurt's body on the bridge wall. They were pressed closely enough together that Blaine could smell the spicy top notes of Kurt's cologne over the scents of cedar and pine infused in the night air, and once again he tried not to feel like too much of a creep when he leaned even closer to speak into Kurt's ear.

"Kurt, what _is_ this?"

"WaterFire," Kurt told him breathlessly, head turned towards Blaine but eyes still fixed upon the events below. "It's a non-profit arts thing they do through summer and fall, but I was sure we were going to miss it. Isn't it beautiful?"

Blaine nodded, swallowing thickly—the sense of magic and enchantment in the air was tangible and heady. For most of the song they simply watched, and when he felt Kurt beginning to stand straight and turn around, Blaine quickly stepped back. He caught his breath for a moment, taking in the sight of Kurt gently back-lit by the fire show and having never looked quite so alive and joyous, and then Kurt was tugging on his elbow again, saying something about going to sit out on the end of the stone platform that tapered out from the bridge and into a point, so that they could see the gondolas close-up.

As they were seating themselves at the end of the platform, legs dangling over the edge, the band started the next song on their set list. The crowd's attention was momentarily diverted away from the water as they let out a cheer for the quieter, folksy introduction of a song, and Blaine's breath hitched at the first lyric, the singer's voice ringing out clear over the cheering.

"_I am the boy your mother wanted you to meet, but I am broken and torn with halos at my feet…"_

He was caught, captured as he took in the beatific smile on Kurt's face, flames reflected in his eyes and flickering across his pale, lightly freckled skin. The crowd joined in with the chorus, hundreds and thousands of voices winding around him as they vocalized and sang the words, _"what a crying shame, a crying shame what we became."_

The bright yet bittersweet mood of the song juxtaposed against the slow progression of the gondolas along the river somehow buoyed Blaine up, filling him with a sad sort of happiness. Everything was pure and beautiful, Kurt most of all, and he wondered if they had missed their chance, wondered if they had ever been destined for anything else, anything more than what they had confined themselves to in order to hold onto one another for as long as possible. Were they meant for something more?

Kurt was reaching out to a woman clad in floaty white robes gliding past, standing up in her gondola, and she handed him a white carnation that he held to his nose, eyes flicking to Blaine over the top of the petals. Without conscious thought of what he was doing, Blaine slid his arm around Kurt's waist, shifting closer and never once letting his gaze waver. Strings layered through the song's second chorus, a beat kicking in, and Blaine could feel himself leaning infinitesimally closer, tongue darting out to wet his lips. Kurt tensed beneath his arm and let the flower fall to his lap, wide eyes flicking down to Blaine's mouth and back up again, and oh, how had Blaine never _seen_ him before? Was this moment, this single, suspended moment, exactly what Carole had meant?

The song, the water and the sound of fire crackling became nothing but the score to their wonderful, unexpected, perfect movie moment, and at once it felt like something inevitable. He moved in even closer, tilting his face slightly upward, and his breath was leaving his body in a single, shuddering exhale as his eyelids fluttered closed, and—

Cheering, louder even than the singing throughout the song had been. Blaine's eyes snapped open once more and he reared back, realizing that the song had ended abruptly and without warning. Kurt blinked at him owlishly and cleared his throat, finally dropping his gaze to the flower in his lap, the pristine white petals a shock against the dark material of his jeans. Blaine mentally shook himself.

_What the _fuck_ was that, Anderson? Your life isn't a goddamn movie; way to go about alienating your best friend a week into the trip._

There was applause, rousing and loud; Blaine took his arm from around Kurt's waist and joined in just to give his hands something to do. He wanted to slap himself silly; what had he been thinking? In the space of twenty bottomless seconds, he'd almost ruined everything, and judging by the confused expression on Kurt's face as he slowly, dazedly clapped his hands, he might have already succeeded.

* * *

**Distance: 805.8 miles**


	7. Not for the Faint of Heart (Connecticut)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 010: Wednesday 26 September, 2012  
****Not for the Faint of Heart (Connecticut)****  
**

"_Hmm. I've never seen that one before. April always used to rave about it, though."_

"_And _All About Eve _is a classic…"_

"_Nah. Let's try something new."_

* * *

"What did I say to you this morning?"

Kurt paused with the last bite of pizza halfway to his mouth and regarded Blaine through narrowed eyes. His gaze was too focused, like the beam of a laser zeroed in on him, and his face entirely too bright and open. It was what Blaine looked like when he was trying to overcompensate for something, when he was intentionally playing dumb and acting like something huge hadn't happened, keeping his head down and hoping for it all to be swept beneath the carpet like the family issues that had plagued his home life throughout his childhood and teenage years.

It was maddening. Kurt was the product of an open home, where the issues were discussed at length—much to everyone's embarrassment, at times—and resolutions reached. He was also not someone who often shied away from confrontation. He was quick-witted with a razor-sharp tongue, and when there was an argument to be had, he knew how to stand his ground and usually come out on top.

The thing was that there was no argument to be had over whatever the hell was going on with Blaine. A confrontation of sorts, yes, but a confrontation he had no idea how to approach. In order to do so, he would have to first work through his own thoughts and feelings about what had almost happened between them on the platform. He'd realized that he wasn't entirely opposed to the idea of Blaine closing the distance between them and pressing his lips to Kurt's in a kiss that he hadn't even known he'd been anticipating until they were mere inches apart. Facing up to that was going to open up an entire can of worms that he wasn't in any way prepared to deal with just yet.

"Something about the rooster," he finally answered, taking his bite of pizza and chewing it slowly, savoring the rich blend of herbs, spices and tomato. Neither the movie nor the website had been lying—the Mystic Pizza was heavenly. Coupled with the cozy, warm and inviting atmosphere, right down to the eclectic radio station blaring Sneaker Pimps and Sigur Ros, it felt like this place was probably the worst kept secret in all of Connecticut.

"Right. That stupid rooster," Blaine muttered, and Kurt pursed his lips against a smile—the crowing had started at around five a.m. and hadn't stopped for at least an hour. He vowed that, despite the undeniable pleasantness of getting an early start, it was the last time they would park the R.V. anywhere near a farm.

"I was only half-listening, to be honest," Kurt said, wiping his hands on his napkin and setting it over his cleared plate.

"I don't blame you," Blaine said, and echoed Kurt's movements before crossing his arms over his chest and leaning his elbows on the table top. "So you remember what happens today, right?"

"Blaine, can we not?" Kurt pleaded, dropping his head into his hands. "I'm already suffering pre-traumatic stress disorder."

"I swear to god, sometimes you're more melodramatic than a Chekhov play," Blaine countered.

"Yes, well, Chekhov was never subjected to the horrors of Walmart," Kurt said. "And up until five seconds ago I was doing a great job of forgetting all about them."

"Aw, poor Kurt," Blaine teased him in a wheedling voice before finally relenting, pulling out his wallet and paying their bill, and leaving what looked like a generous tip. "Okay, let's talk about something else. Favorite… Favorite scene from the movie."

"The pub, the one that looked like a house," Kurt said, shrugging into his jacket. He followed Blaine down the stairs that led out of the restaurant with one last glance around to commit every inch of the place to memory. "Did it remind you of the Cannery, too?"

"If you're thinking of that one time we tried smoking, get out of my head."

"I totally was. What about you? Favorite scene?"

"I don't know, I mean… I can't really pick just one. I liked the story about the guy who built the house for his wife," Blaine said as they made their way around to the parking lot at the back of the building. "You know, no one does that anymore. Build a house for their husband, or wife. It's all down payments and escrow and mortgages. Isn't there something kind of romantic about building a house with the person you love? Choosing everything together, right down to the roof tiles?"

"First you have to decide where home actually is," Kurt replied. As they reached the R.V., he unlocked the passenger side door and tossed the keys to Blaine—he wasn't about to drive himself to his own demise, after all. "But yeah, I can see how that'd be romantic."

"Did I just hear you say the word 'romantic' unironically, Kurt Hummel? Is the ice finally melting?"

"I only said that I could see how it would be romantic, not that I thought it was."

Blaine said nothing—he didn't need to; his grin said it all.

"Just shut up and drive. Let's get this over with."

* * *

Their route down I-95 passed all too quickly, and the pit of dread in Kurt's stomach only grew bigger the closer to New Haven they got. Before he was ready for it, the pre-programmed voice of the GPS was cheerfully telling them that they had reached their destination.

"We need to change the GPS voice," Kurt said, making no move to unbuckle his seat belt when Blaine cut the engine. "I'm going to have nightmares about it for months after we get back."

"She sounds kind of… Kathy Bates in _Misery,_ doesn't she?"

"Oh my god, _thank you._ I've been trying to figure it out ever since we left."

With no response from Blaine aside from a brief, quiet laugh, Kurt fell silent and glared through the windshield at the sprawling building at the other end of the parking lot.

"You know, it might not be as bad as you think," Blaine said gently, slowly unclipping his seat belt as if Kurt were some kind of flighty animal with a low startle point. Kurt snorted before letting out a long-suffering sigh and following suit.

"I've seen the People of Walmart blog, Blaine. I know exactly how bad it's going to be."

When they were almost at the automatic sliding doors, Blaine fished his phone out of his pocket. "Let's turn this into a game," he said. "The winner is whoever gets the most People of Walmart-worthy pictures."

Kurt smiled weakly, took a bracing breath, and followed him inside.

His first impression was that perhaps Blaine was right. It wasn't entirely hideous—bright and open, and it at least smelled clean. It seemed that they'd timed their visit well, for there wasn't an intolerable amount of people milling around, mostly mothers with infants.

"Got one," Blaine murmured, surreptitiously snapping a picture of a middle-aged balding man in a white t-shirt and what looked suspiciously like pajama pants. He had his back turned to them as he walked towards the housewares section, and Kurt raised his eyebrows when he took in the clear plastic hanger hooked over the back of his collar, two identical white t-shirts just hanging there as he went about his business.

"Oh my god. Let's just get this over with," Kurt muttered, and turned to grab a cart.

Thankfully—due in part to the amount of times they'd fallen back on lazy student ways and eaten out instead of cooking—their grocery list was short, and by the time they found the alcohol their cart was only half-full. Kurt had taken over full control of the cart when it had become obvious that Blaine couldn't be trusted not to loiter around the baked goods, and they'd made good time. He might have even gone so far as to have said it wasn't an entirely unpleasant pit stop.

And then they reached the end of the aisle, and Blaine's knobbly elbow was digging sharply into Kurt's side, tearing his attention away from the tequila—yellow, never clear—that he'd discovered an affinity for during freshman orientation at Bowdoin.

"Blaine, what the—"

"Look at the baby."

Kurt turned back to let his gaze follow where Blaine was pointing, his expectations so set on seeing an infant sweet enough to make his teeth hurt that at first he didn't even notice. When the sight before him finally registered, his eyes went wide.

Halfway down the opposite aisle was what looked like an abandoned cart with a baby of about nine months, clad only in a diaper, lying sideways across the child seat. The top of its head was pushed up against the metal bars of the cart, and as they watched, it rapidly cried itself awake. There was no one else in the aisle, no sign of a mother or father or even a nanny anywhere.

"Did someone just abandon it?" Blaine hissed.

"God, I hope not. Especially not in a Walmart."

"What if they did? Kurt, we can't just leave it like that…"

"And we can't just touch someone else's baby!"

"We could at least go sit him up. Look how uncomfortable that must be," Blaine reasoned, and Kurt had to admit that he couldn't imagine having thin metal bars digging into one's head as being particularly enjoyable. "Although… What if he hasn't been abandoned? What if the mom comes back and yells at us? Oh my god, what if she tries to get us arrested—"

"Blaine, calm down. Look, let's just… Okay, let's go sit him up, and we can wait to see if anyone comes back."

They approached cautiously, and Kurt briefly wondered if whomever was watching the security cameras was already calling the police, suspicious that there was about to be a kidnapping. The baby was crying louder and louder, and still there was no sign of anyone even closely resembling a parent.

Kurt cast a cursory glance at the contents of the cart—a pack of diapers, jars upon jars of baby food—before even looking at the baby, with its reddened face and legs trying to kick out. He chewed the inside of his bottom lip through a moment of indecision before finally reaching inside the cart.

"Wait!" Blaine whispered. "What if he can't hold his head up yet?"

Gesturing to the cart, Kurt quickly explained, "Babies don't start on solids until four to six months, and they can usually hold their heads up by then. This guy looks around nine or ten months, so we're fine."

"You're like Sherlock Holmes, Baby Edition."

"Shut up."

As if on cue, the baby's cries grew considerably quieter, and Kurt blinked in surprise.

"What are you, the baby whisperer now?" Blaine asked, sounding mostly derisive but a little impressed.

"Shut _up,"_ Kurt hissed again.

Without giving himself time to hesitate and second-guess the entire thing, Kurt reached out to sit the baby up. When he was upright, with his hands squeezing the plastic bar and chubby legs kicking out underneath the seat, he looked almost happy.

"That's much better, isn't it, little guy?"

"What are you doing? Get away from my baby!"

At the screeching voice, Kurt whirled on the spot to see a short, frizzy-haired woman carrying a toddler on her hip and clutching a large bottle of margarita mix in her other hand. She marched toward them with all the fierce presence of an Amazonian warrior, the angry and stricken look on her face immediately setting alarm bells ringing in Kurt's mind.

"Abort mission, abort mission," Blaine hissed through gritted teeth, and Kurt raised his hands as the woman drew closer.

"Ma'am, we were just making sure he was alright. He woke up crying and we couldn't see anyone—"

"Get away from him!" she repeated, her voice exactly the same volume it had been from the end of the aisle. She pushed past them both, all but threw the bottle into the cart and then took off, stopping only to toss one last dirty look over her shoulder as Kurt and Blaine both stood there, dumbfounded.

"People of fucking Walmart," Kurt said after a few seconds had passed, and from the corner of his eye he could see Blaine's hand twitch, as if to reach out and comfort him.

"How did you know all of that baby stuff? You were amazing," Blaine said earnestly, settling his hand at the small of Kurt's back and guiding him back towards their cart. Kurt almost jumped out of his skin at the contact; the first time Blaine had touched him since their almost kiss—because that's exactly what it was, wasn't it?—at WaterFire.

"Helps to have a midwife for a stepmom," Kurt said fondly, and reminded himself to call home.

"But you've totally got the instinct," Blaine pressed as they rounded the corner at the end of the aisle and founds themselves wandering slowly past shelves full of party supplies.

"I guess that's a good thing, if I ever wanna have kids," Kurt said.

"Do you?"

"I mean, it depends on where I end up. I'd like to live in a state that'll let me adopt, of course, but… Yeah, I'd like kids someday."

"Me too," Blaine agreed. "Two girls and a boy."

"Why that combination?"

"Well, with two dads, I wouldn't want my daughter to feel like the only girl in a house full of guys, and since I want at least two kids, I figure why not make it three?" Blaine said. "What about you?"

"I've always thought a girl and a boy, but your reasoning actually makes a lot of sense."

"And I'd have all of them close together, so that they didn't end up ten years apart like Cooper and I."

"Agreed. I can't imagine what it would have been like to have a sibling that much older or younger than me, but I guess that's what the age gap would have been if Mom—" Kurt stopped abruptly, trying to clear his throat at the sudden, acrid burn of bile. He could feel Blaine's hesitant gaze settle upon him, and he turned his attention instead to the shelves closest to them, picking up a pack of napkins printed with lassos and horseshoes. "Remember your cowboy-themed party?"

"You mean the best party ever? Of course I do," Blaine answered smoothly, and Kurt shot him a grateful look. "I should totally throw another one."

"Blaine, you know having a cowboy party at twenty-two is a lot different than having a cowboy party at ten, right?"

"Cowboys are hot and you know it, Kurt Hummel. After all, who was the one who was so gung-ho about _Brokeback_ being our Wyoming movie when barely any of it was actually shot _in_ Wyoming?"

"You saw the alternatives, Blaine," Kurt retorted, replacing the pack of napkins on the shelf and continuing their slow amble down the aisle.

"How do you feel, knowing you've survived your first trip to Walmart?" Blaine asked after a few moments had passed.

Kurt just snorted derisively. "Barely survived. We still have to check out."

"Hey, seriously," Blaine said, catching him by the arm. Kurt stopped, turned, and held his breath. Blaine was doing that thing again, the thing where his whole body got tense in the most effortlessly languid way, as if he was suspended in the moment of experiencing release and relief and getting every single thing he ever wanted all at once. The exact same thing that Kurt had felt in him when Blaine's arm was around his waist, when Blaine's lips were inches from his own, and Kurt's heart stuttered in his chest at the mere memory. And just like that, the tension was gone and Blaine was wrapping him in a hug, half-whispering, "I'm totally proud of you."

Just as Blaine was stepping back, Kurt weakly lifted his arms and caught him loosely by the elbows, capturing them both in a replay of that moment on the platform. Blaine's eyes were honeyed and warm, searching his own for an answer to the question of what to do next, and Kurt felt his tried-and-tested sultry smirk just beginning to tug at the corners of his mouth when, out of nowhere, two teenagers dressed in hoodies and jeans went careening past them, their cart almost knocking them over.

"Surviving," Kurt muttered as he stepped away, and Blaine sighed heavily, burying his hands in his pockets and looking anywhere but Kurt.

He handed over control of their cart to Blaine, wrapping his arms around his middle as they set off the way they had come, all thoughts of tequila somehow forgotten in the shuffle. As they walked to the front of the store in silence, Kurt stole a brief glance at Blaine, taking in the set of his jaw and his furrowed brow. It was the look he wore when he was either fighting with himself, lying to himself, or both.

_And the lies that we tell ourselves when we're young are so much more throwaway than the ones we tell ourselves as we get older,_ Kurt thought. _There's always so much less at stake._

Which was the entire reason that they could talk about any topic under the sun except this one, why this was the one thing that made Kurt feel like his throat was filled with glue. It wasn't like they'd met only six weeks ago, or even six months ago; their entire shared history could vanish with a touch of lips or rushing hands. They could wreck each other, and then what?

"Okay, don't panic…" Blaine trailed off, pulling Kurt from his woolgathering. "But I just saw a rat."

Kurt stopped in his tracks, and pinched between his eyes. "Blaine… Can we please just find a fucking Whole Foods now?"

* * *

**Distance: 912.8 miles**


	8. Waterlights (New York)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 013: Saturday 29 September, 2012  
****Waterlights (New York)****  
**

"_New York, on the other hand… There's a city made for a classic."_

"_And what do you suggest?"_

"Breakfast at Tiffany's,_ of course."_

* * *

It was their third night in New York, and already Blaine knew he would never get enough of the city of a million movies. His mind was filled to the rafters with moving snapshots of every moment so far, playing on a loop in his mind. The awestruck expression on Kurt's face as he looked out over the Hudson while they breezed down the 9A, _Empire State of Mind Part II_ quietly playing in the background. The entire world full of color and light as they turned on the spot at the bottom of the TKTS steps in Times Square, where Blaine had felt as if he was running inexplicably late for something. Craning his neck on the 6 to try and catch a glimpse of the faded glory of the disused City Hall station. A bona fide breakfast at Tiffany's with croissants from the Macaron Café. Laying a single red rose of gratitude and memoriam on a bench in Christopher Park and stepping inside the Stonewall Inn a few minutes later, his throat thick with a borrowed memory.

After the very first item on their list—window shopping all the way up and down Fifth Avenue—Kurt had dragged him to Grand Central, and they had both stopped in the middle of the main concourse to look up at the arched windows set high into the brick walls. When Blaine had asked why Kurt looked a little sad, he'd answered, "You've seen all those black and white photographs of the way this place used to be, sunlight streaming in through those windows right there. It can't do that anymore because the buildings around this place are too tall."

"That's my star cinematographer," Blaine had replied, nudging Kurt's shoulder with his own. "Always worrying about where the light's coming from."

"I'm serious, Blaine! Shooting in this city must be a logistical nightmare…"

Even so, Blaine had never seen Kurt so full of life and wonder, not even in Boston. The previous night, after they had decided to capitalize on their advantageously close proximity to the Statue of Liberty, they had fallen into the bed they'd taken to sharing most nights and Kurt had talked long into the dark hours about all of the city's little nuances, all the places he wanted to come back and explore, everywhere he wanted to work someday.

And now, standing on the observation deck at the top of Rockefeller Center with his gaze sweeping from one side of the horizon to the other, Blaine truly wondered if it could ever get better than this. Sure, he hadn't found the one place he truly belonged like he had been hoping—and expecting, given the astounding mix of cultures to which New York played host—but he was still in the greatest city in the world, sharing every second with his best friend.

"I can totally see why people pay so much money for penthouse apartments," Kurt said from next to him as he fed another quarter into the coin-operated binoculars. "If I could have even a tiny fraction of this view, I'd be happy."

Now that Kurt had distracted Blaine from the view out over Central Park, however, Blaine's attention drifted downward to where the fabric of Kurt's jacket stretched across the breadth of his back, the way the tight, dark denim of Kurt's jeans hugged the curve of his ass so tightly that they could have been painted onto him. He really was unfairly attractive, and Blaine found himself wishing that the number of spectators milling around the deck was much higher, if only to give Blaine an excuse to stand closer to him, close enough that he could justify half-fitting their bodies together just like he had on the bridge at WaterFire. He wanted to be back down on the streets, in the middle of the almost oppressive crush where the danger of losing one another in the crowd was so great that Kurt would end up with fingers tightly gripping the crook of Blaine's elbow.

The craving to touch and be close was agonizingly frustrating—it was an itch beneath the surface of his skin that he couldn't scratch, one that only grew worse no matter how many times he told himself that it didn't even exist, that it was simply a physical reaction to spending so much time with a hot guy. A hot guy with legs for days, broad shoulders, thick hair he could card his fingers through until he couldn't see them, and a way of looking at him sometimes that made him feel like he was the beating heart at the center of the universe.

"This is becoming a problem," Blaine thought aloud, cursing inwardly when Kurt quirked an eyebrow up at him in question. Thinking more quickly than he generally considered himself able, he added, "I, uh… don't think I can leave this view, you know."

"I know what you mean," Kurt said, straightening up with a sigh. "But I'm exhausted and I'd rather not fall asleep halfway along the Brooklyn Bridge, so…"

"Yeah, let's go."

They rode the R from 49th to City Hall, Blaine sharing Kurt's iPod and listening along to _City of Blinding Lights,_ watching their reflections in the opposite window each time they went through a tunnel. He tried not to think too much about the first line of the song—_the more you see, the less you know—_and how perfectly fitting it was. Nevertheless it remained stuck in his head throughout eating the hot dogs they bought from one of the vendors in the park, right up until they were about to step onto the Brooklyn Bridge, when he spotted a gay couple walking in the opposite direction, hand in hand.

"We should hold hands," he blurted out before he could stop himself, all at once feeling like he was twelve years old.

Kurt stared at him for a long moment, before finally asking, "Why?"

"What do you mean, why? Because we're _here,_ and we _can,_ that's why."

"My hands are still greasy from that hot dog."

Blaine rolled his eyes and grabbed Kurt's hand, holding on tightly and leading him onto the bridge. They were silent in the cool night as they walked, and Blaine found himself suddenly grateful for the quiet, for the fact that he could walk hand in hand with Kurt without feeling like he was overstepping some boundary or crossing some line—both between himself and Kurt, and between them and the rest of the world. It was a blessedly uncomplicated moment, and Blaine reveled in it, giving Kurt's warm hand a reassuring squeeze and earning himself an uncharacteristically shy smile in return.

"Wow," he breathed at the center of the bridge, where Kurt gently unclasped their hands and they both looked out at the breathtaking light show before them.

Tom Fruin's _Watertower_ stood proudly atop a collection of artists' studios on Jay Street, lights switching and undulating from within the multicolored stained-Plexiglas structure that stood as tribute and monument to the ten thousand water towers throughout the borough of Brooklyn.

"Now _that's_ something I'd put in a movie," Kurt said quietly, after Blaine had spent a few minutes trying to find any sort of discernible pattern in the light sequencing.

"I'd love to see how you'd work it in."

"Title montage, maybe?"

"No, this place is worth more. I mean, look at it. It's a work of art—totally worthy of the moment the two leads finally get over themselves."

Kurt bit his lip for a moment, seeming to consider something as he straightened up, chin tilting upward almost infinitesimally. Blaine knew that look.

"So maybe I'm the one with the drinking problem who'd been doing much better, but fell off the wagon. Everything had been going so well, and suddenly everything was falling apart around me," Kurt said. He closed his eyes, rolled his neck and dropped his shoulders, and it was like he was wearing another skin entirely. He approached the side of the bridge, leaning his folded arms on the rusted metal plate of the bridge wall, his eyes taking on a far-away look as he gazed at Watertower.

"And something pithy and clichéd was said to me, the guy who's desperately, head-over-heels in love with you, despite all of your flaws, and I've been looking for you all night," Blaine continued, backing up a few paces and stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Oh, and it's raining."

"Obviously. And I'm trying to figure out a way to fix everything I've fucked up, but I just—I just _can't,"_ Kurt exclaimed, dropping his head into his hands.

"And then I see you, and call out your name."

Obediently, Kurt pulled his hands out of his hair and looked around at Blaine, abject guilt coloring his features, and not for the first time Blaine wondered why Kurt had never wanted to be an actor. "The obligatory 'what are you doing here?' line, of course."

Blaine jogged closer, leaving no more than two feet of space between them, and tipped his head back a little so that he could look directly up into Kurt's eyes. He looked tortured, full of regret, but still hopeful, and Blaine felt himself falling a little further into their silly, improvised scene. "Maybe they don't need any words, or maybe they need an epic, _When Harry Met Sally-_style speech."

"I think the latter. No music, just the rain," Kurt said, and then tentatively reached out to take Blaine's arms. "You say something, and I try to disagree with you, and you steamroll over me, and of course, I ask you what happens next."

"Close-up shot, I tell you that we'll figure it out, pause, _together,"_ Blaine said. Kurt looked down with a coy smile, and Blaine—Blaine's assumed character—tensed in anticipation.

"Switches to a profile shot," Kurt said quietly, looking at Blaine through his long eyelashes. "Watertower's perfectly framed between us, and we lean in…"

Though he didn't move a muscle, there was a challenge in Kurt's eyes, and for one endless moment it felt like everything had ground to a standstill. Cars and pedestrians alike had stopped in their tracks, the thick clouds overhead were no longer moving, and even the lights inside Watertower were frozen.

"Blaine…"

It was a reverent whisper; Blaine shivered, and that was all it took. Whatever spell had befallen them was broken, had been swept away by the chill breeze that washed over them both, and Kurt shook his head as if to clear it as he stepped back. Blaine wanted to say something, wanted to try and speak around the lump that sat heavily just above the dip in the center of collarbone, but Kurt was already looking back at Watertower, taking a deep breath that made his shoulders rise and stay there even after he let it out.

"Something like that?" Kurt asked, voice strung tight.

_Something like that, but something more. Something where I'm not afraid to kiss you just because of what it might mean for us, where it's an act of faith the likes of which I'm not sure I have._

Blaine cleared his throat and hummed an agreement he didn't believe in. Maybe they needed to go out somewhere they'd be forced to interact with other people, get out of this little intense bubble of two they'd formed and stayed inside. They were sinking into new habits that felt somehow old, like they'd always done exactly this but never recognized it for what it truly was.

All he knew was that something had to give, and soon.

* * *

**Distance: 1,000 miles**

* * *

**Note:** If you want to listen to any of the music featured in this story, please go to **100daysmusic dot tumblr dot com** :) Thank you also to everyone reading. It's a true gift when you take the time to review-Nietzche once said that writers write not to be admired, but to be understood, and that's what you give me and every other author when leaving thoughts and comments.


	9. The Wisdom of Strangers (New Jersey)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 015: Monday 1****st**** October, 2012  
****The Wisdom of Strangers (New Jersey)****  
**

"_Damn the Man, save the Empire!"_

"_I'm drawing a blank."_

"_Seriously, Blaine? No veto for you…"_

* * *

"You want him, don't you?"

"Yes. Wait, what?"

Kurt dragged his eyes away from where Blaine was dancing to _Point Of View,_ his features animated as he talked to one of the other engagement party guests, and glanced up at where Andrew stood next to him at the bar. He wore a knowing expression, and took a slow sip of his Negroni while watching Kurt over the rim of his glass.

"Blaine," he finally said. "You want him."

"No, I—"

"Every time I've looked over at you, you've had your eyes glued to him," Andrew continued, sliding onto a stool and signaling the bartender for a refill for Kurt, who'd been playing it safe with vodka-cranberries for most of the evening. It was his turn to drive in the morning, and he didn't want to be hungover for it. "So why aren't you doing anything about it?"

"That's none—"

"—of my business, I know. Indulge me."

Kurt regarded him coolly for a moment, this tall, dark and handsome thirty-something professional with whom he'd been acquainted for approximately three hours and felt himself wishing he could go back to a far simpler time in his life, when he could have just walked away without it being seen as an act of cowardice.

Didn't things used to be so much simpler? They had certainly felt like it the previous day, when he and Blaine had spent the entirety of their Sunday wandering the Ocean City boardwalk, checking out the shops and ducking seagulls, and finally heading to the movies to catch a revival showing of _Empire Records._ Before they had made a last-minute decision to head up to Hoboken to check out the waterfront, Blaine had been threatening to buy him a neon yellow t-shirt bearing the 'YOLO' slogan, until Kurt had reminded him that he could only get away with buying him one obnoxious shirt per year.

Without dwelling upon the fact that Kurt had let his eyes flutter closed for a second each and every time Blaine's arm had brushed his at the movie theater, it had been like nothing had changed between them, like these moments of push and pull that they'd for some reason been experiencing had never even happened. Like he hadn't wanted to take Blaine's face in his hands and kiss him until they both couldn't breathe, right there on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Obviously, it was just a sex thing. Kurt hadn't gotten laid in a while, and as he'd said to April the day before they left, anyone could see that Blaine was hot. The difference was that Blaine was also his best friend, and there was a line between them that couldn't be crossed, no matter how sexually frustrated he was. Blaine deserved better than that.

"We're best friends," Kurt said, leaning his elbow on the bar and cupping the back of his head. "Have been since we were six. It just… It wouldn't be a good idea."

"And why not?" Andrew asked conversationally, as if he were enquiring about the weather and not the very foundation of Kurt's entire value system.

"I mean, there was a time when I thought that maybe… Maybe we'd end up as more than what we are, but… I was just a kid. What we have now is—is much better. He's my best friend, you know? He's the most important person in the world to me, and I don't know that I could take that chance and risk fucking everything up," Kurt admitted, the words tumbling from his mouth before he could stop them. Perhaps there was something to this whole 'confidence in strangers' thing after all. Andrew was silent for a moment, looking like he was carefully considering something, and Kurt decided to change the subject before their conversation started striking all the wrong chords. "Anyway, this is your night! Tell me about how you and Toby met."

"Ha! Well, um… I'd just moved to the city to be with my college boyfriend who was already living there, and when I showed up a day early, I found him fucking somebody else in the bed that was supposed to be ours. I had nowhere to go; David was the only person I knew in the city, and so of course I went to a bar. And…" Andrew trailed off, his voice growing soft as he looked over at where Toby sat talking with two girls, everything about him artfully and impeccably disheveled, from his wild bird's nest of blond hair to his loosened tie, and he somehow managed to pull it off without looking like a thirty-year-old poser. "There he was. I walked into this shitty little hole in the wall called The Crow, and he was in the middle of changing his shirt, right there behind the bar."

"Love at first sight?" Kurt asked slyly.

"Hardly. He took one look at my face and mixed me one of these," Andrew said, tilting his glass. "We talked all night, he gave me a place to crash, and about six months later I finally got my act together and kissed him. The rest is history."

"Who proposed?"

Andrew's laugh came out as a sharp bark, and he wiped his hand over his face. "He did, behind a fucking 7-Eleven."

Kurt furrowed his brow. "How does that even happen?"

"Oh, he didn't plan on it, I'm sure. He'd spent a month doing all these things for me… Expensive dinners, dropping by my office with a surprise latte and a cruller, taking me to some of my favorite places in the city… You know, the usual proposal set-ups. And there always seemed to be something on the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn't get the words out. Of course, I had no idea. We'd never even talked about getting married before the laws changed.

"Anyway, we were on our way back from dinner one night and I got so frustrated with the way he was acting that I just picked a fight with him. I don't even remember what it was about now. We stopped for gas, and I just—I had to take a minute to get my shit together, because fighting never solves a fucking thing. Anyway, I was standing around behind this 7-Eleven and he just came out of nowhere and started in on round forty-six, going on and on about how I'm so damn hard to propose to. So once I got over the surprise of it all, I just told him he could ask me right then and there, and I'd say yes."

"And he asked you, and you said yes," Kurt prompted, and Andrew grinned.

"He got down on one knee and just looked at me like he hated me a little bit, and said, 'so will you marry me or not?' And I kicked him in the shin for being such an asshole about it, but yeah, I said yes."

Kurt smiled despite himself, and found his gaze wandering back to settle on Blaine once more, still dancing and surrounded by people smiling and having a good time. He watched the way Blaine's hips moved, how he turned on the spot and shook his shoulders back and forth. When Blaine caught his eye and grinned, the low light casting shadows across his face, Kurt's stomach dropped and he turned back to Andrew.

"Kurt, I don't expect you to completely understand what I'm about to say to you," Andrew began, scratching at the stubble beneath his chin. "But there's something that my dad always used to say to me, and that was, 'Try everything once, but make the mistakes first.'"

"I don't wanna make this mistake," Kurt replied quietly, eyes trained on his glass. He'd never been that great at telling lies right to a person's face.

"Is this guy bothering you?"

Toby had appeared at Kurt's other side seemingly from out of nowhere, glancing down at him with kind eyes and a knowing smirk. He stood straight, self-assured, and with a napkin wrapped around the stem of his wine glass.

"Not at all," Kurt answered breezily, as if all was right with the world and he hadn't just been getting his ass handed to him along with a side of truth bomb. "Thank you for inviting us, by the way. It's a great party."

"It's the least we could do after Andrew took you to the pavement downstairs," Toby said, waving him off with a slight wince.

"Sorry again about that," Andrew intoned. "There's fashionably late, obnoxiously late, and then there's us."

"It's fine, I promise. I don't bruise all that easily," Kurt quipped—another lie. He'd already been to the bathroom once to check out the wicked bruise that was already blossoming purple and red along his hip. Perhaps he needed to start looking around corners with a mirror—perhaps not, if getting mown down by a handsome stranger was a thing that was going to happen to him now.

"Well, if I'm not interrupting, I just wanted to see about stealing away my fiancé for a dance, now that the band is off their break," Toby said, and Kurt nodded.

"Of course, of course."

"Maybe it's not a mistake. Things like this are never that complicated, you know. It's people that complicate them," Andrew said, his voice low enough for only Kurt to hear. With one last meaningful glance in Blaine's direction, he took the hand that Toby was offering him, and left Kurt with his thoughts.

He watched the string quartet, hired to provide most of the evening's entertainment, file back onto the small stage that had been set up in front of the HMag penthouse's floor to ceiling windows. Wondering if Andrew was right, he downed a healthy mouthful of his fresh vodka-cranberry. Maybe… Maybe giving into this thing between him and Blaine, whatever the fuck it was, would be good for them. Blaine wanted it as well, that much he knew, and aside from the fact that it terrified him just a little bit, it could be beneficial for them both to just give into it and get it out of their systems.

_It won't be out of your system, though,_ chided a little voice in the back of his head. _You'll only want more, because you've always been—_

"Shut up," Kurt muttered, knocking back the rest of his drink in one and wiping his hand across his mouth just as the band started the first song of the second half of their set to a round of applause.

"You owe me a dance, mister," Blaine said into his ear, his warm breath smelling faintly of rum and his hand light on Kurt's wrist. "Can't have you propping up the bar all night long."

"Next song, maybe," Kurt said, trying to put it off long enough for the sudden rush of Dutch courage to fade away.

"You love this song; don't even try to deny it," Blaine said, cutting Kurt off before he'd even opened his mouth to refute. "And I know you have a super-secret thing for The Wanted, so just for tonight, skip the eye-rolling and come dance with me."

Blaine's eyes were imploring, hopeful in that puppy dog way that Kurt found nigh impossible to refuse, and his willpower slipped from his tenuous grasp quicker than sand. The beat kicked in as he hopped down from his stool and let Blaine lead him onto the dance floor where the rest of the guests were already gathering, dancing in couples and groups.

Kurt took a steadying breath when Blaine's hands settled on his hips, swaying them in time with his own, and he raised his arms, resting his hands just over Blaine's shoulders. Yes, this was fine; he could deal with this. This was a safe distance, and Blaine was smiling and happy, and the music was fantastic. Everything was fantastic.

And then Blaine leaned in, and every muscle in Kurt's body tensed. "That guy by the end of the bar, the one in the corduroy shirt? He's been checking you out all night," he murmured next to Kurt's ear. "Pretty hot, a good dancer…"

Slowly and in time with the song, Kurt turned them so that he could glance over Blaine's shoulder at the man in question. Blaine was right; under the brightly spot-lit bar, he could see the guy watching him, though he didn't appear to have the temerity to hold Kurt's gaze longer than a couple of seconds before he was looking away. He was classically handsome, though perhaps a little strong in the jaw for Kurt's taste, with thick, jet-black hair that had obviously been sculpted into an organized chaos.

"You and I don't often find the same people attractive," he mused, turning back to Blaine and unconsciously running his thumb down the column of Blaine's neck.

"Not often, no. Maybe we should invite him back to the R.V. with us," Blaine said, wiggling his eyebrows and holding Kurt's gaze in a way that, had he not known better, would have made him think Blaine was serious.

"Nah," Kurt said, "he's not really my type."

"Your type is _breathing,_ Kurt," Blaine countered sardonically.

"Play nice," Kurt said, batting his shoulder, and Blaine just smiled up at him and wrapped an arm around his waist, forcing them closer together like it was the most natural thing in the world. He could feel the heat from Blaine's body pouring off him in waves, even through the layers of their clothes and the space between them, and it was close to intoxicating. Blaine reached behind his own neck to take Kurt's right hand, his thumb pressing over Kurt's lifeline and fingers wrapped around the back, and Kurt only just held back a yelp of surprise as Blaine dipped him in time with the strings that led into the second chorus.

Blaine righted them quickly, spinning Kurt out and then back in so fast that his feet could barely keep up, and it was only when the song grew quieter that it dimly registered that Blaine's chest was pressed to Kurt's back, their joined hands crossed over his waist. Kurt turned to face him, a hand pressed just over his heart, and they circled one another slowly. Blaine's eyes were hooded and growing darker by the second, tongue flicking out to wet his lips, and all it would take would be for Kurt to lean down, close that last gap. Had this always been there, this nameless something, clamoring in the air between them and waiting to take hold? They could be within its grip in less than seconds.

Blaine's fingertips ghosted the sides of Kurt's neck in the same second that he caught Andrew watching them in his periphery, and it was all too much. Too much pressure, too much expectation, too much that he could fuck up completely if he just acted on his instincts. He closed his eyes, exhaled sharply through his nose, and took Blaine's hands away.

_Things like this are never complicated, you know. It's people that complicate them._

Andrew's words ringing in his ears like a cheap taunt, Kurt did the only thing that he knew how to do: turned tail and walked away, all the way to the oh-thank-god-it's-empty restroom where he locked himself into a stall with fumbling hands. It felt like his entire body was in revolt. The adrenalin that had started its typhoon through his bloodstream the very moment that Blaine had first touched him was chanting Blaine's name, imprinting it into his every cell, and he couldn't think, could only hear the roaring in his ears to a double-time beat of the song from which he'd run.

Feeling like the worst human being in all of history, Kurt closed the lid of the toilet and sank onto it with a shaky sigh, fisted his hands in his hair and squeezed his eyes shut until they stopped burning quite so fiercely. He felt ashamed and utterly defeated. What the fuck was he doing? Who had he become? He hadn't always been this ridiculous slave to his _feelings—_he was Kurt Hummel, for god's sake. He was the one who fucked all the boys he wouldn't in a million years trust to keep his heart safe, and in turn he wasn't forced into keeping theirs. It was easy and fun and simple—three essential attributes which would never apply to this thing with Blaine, this intense thing that made Kurt feel wrong and sordid and, somewhere in amongst the locked file cabinet in the deepest recesses of his heart, also… Kind of right.

But Kurt had just gotten Blaine back after a barren year of separation. He couldn't risk it, he just couldn't.

No, he needed to get himself together, go back out to the party. Smile and play the gracious guest of two people who had quite literally run into him and repaid their folly with an enjoyable evening and free drinks. Tell Blaine that he'd had one too many of those free drinks and had needed to use the facilities. Put the game face back on and hope to god that it was convincing enough, when all he wanted to do was tip over sideways and lie on the ground until his heart stopped spinning.

"Deep breath, Kurt," he whispered. He stood, unlocked the stall door and breathed a sigh of relief when he didn't see Blaine standing on the other side. He rolled his shoulders, fixed his hair in the tall mirror over the sinks, and with an adopted sanguinity he didn't truly feel, left the restroom to face the music.

* * *

**Distance: 1,155 miles**


	10. Peak and Shatter (Pennsylvania)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.  
**Note:** I'm posting a day early as I'll be out of town tomorrow. Normal Wednesday posting will resume next week.

* * *

**Day 017: Wednesday 3****rd**** October, 2012  
****Peak and Shatter (Pennsylvania)****  
**

"_How about _Philadelphia? _ It was one of the suggested additional movies to watch in Gay and Lesbian Studies, but I never got around to it."_

"_I didn't know you took Gay and Lesbian Studies."_

"_A lot happened while you were gone, Blaine."_

* * *

It was surprising just how much distance could be put between two people inside a confined space. When that distance was filled to the roof with overly-bright small talk that left not a single moment for silence, it became as the walls of a fortress, impenetrable and impassable, with no détente in sight.

Since their lost moment in the HMag penthouse, it seemed that Kurt was doing all he could possibly think of to act like everything was normal between them, when everything was as far from normal as it could be. To Blaine, it only felt like salt in the wound. In walking away from him, Kurt had made it perfectly clear that he didn't want Blaine like Blaine wanted him, and that was fine. It was more than fine: it was great, and absolutely for the best. Blaine had been expecting some awkwardness, some avoidance, and some dancing around the issue.

What he hadn't been expecting was Kurt to start acting like some maniac on acid, filling every single minute of their first day in Philadelphia with every possible thing he could apparently think of to do. They'd spent a few hours walking around the city, starting at the Random Tea & Curiosity Shop on 4th, then stopping to see the Liberty Bell and Dream Garden before catching a bus out to West Philadelphia to visit the Please Touch Museum, where they had ridden the carousel two horses apart.

By the time they had made it back to the R.V., Blaine was so exhausted that it was all he could do to shower before collapsing into bed, only noticing as he was finally drifting into the warm clutches of sleep that all of the lights in the rest of the vehicle were turned off and Kurt hadn't slid in next to him.

Blaine had found him early the next morning, sipping coffee at the kitchen counter while he scrolled emails on his phone, any traces of his having slept on the pull-out couch already tucked away. Kurt had smiled at him like everything was fine, and sure, it was all just peachy. Honestly, though, Blaine was just pissed. He'd let his imagination run away with him yet again, and not only did it result in a sharp sting delivered directly to his heart, it had almost put his entire friendship with Kurt on the line. It was just a stupid crush, and he needed to get over it for both their sakes—and if he'd done it at fourteen, he could do it at twenty-two.

Both feeling the need for a more relaxed pace than the almost farcical nature of their previous day, they had settled onto the couch with only a few words exchanged, and watched _Philadelphia._ The anger that had been knotted up inside Blaine's stomach only roiled more the further into the movie they got, and he could tell that Kurt was experiencing something similar by the way he immediately got up afterwards and went outside for some fresh air, despite their being parked in another Walmart lot.

When he'd come back, Kurt had driven them out to Longwood Gardens, where they had spent a while in a more companionable silence than they had shared in over a week. Finally, they'd delved into a complete deconstruction of the movie, debating issues upon which they'd long since established their stances to one another, but going over it all again anyway.

And now, on the way back to the Walmart with no real plans for what to do with their evening, Blaine could feel that the edge had worn off. The silence had morphed back into something comfortable rather than awkward, the radio station playing Springsteen and the sun dipping below the horizon in their wake.

Until his phone trilled in the cup holder, and he saw the name flashing on the display: _Dad._

Blaine had every intention of ignoring it, reasoning that he was driving and would just call his dad back later, even though he knew he wouldn't. And then Kurt, who was sitting with the laptop in the chair behind the cab, asked innocuously, "Aren't you gonna get that?"

With a sigh, Blaine swiped his thumb across the screen and raised the phone to his ear. "Hello?"

"Blaine, hi. I was expecting your voicemail," his dad said, and his cheerful tone already had Blaine feeling prickly. "I just wanted to let you know that I won't have to work this weekend after all. The Nix case settled out of court like we were hoping, so we'll have a couple days of real father-son time. I thought I could show you around D.C., how's that sound?"

"Sounds great, Dad," Blaine said, his teeth gritted and heart sinking. He'd been hoping to just get away with an evening at most. "Though you remember I have Kurt with me, right? So it won't just be father-son time."

"No, I know. Kurt's always welcome, you know that. And actually, I wanted to ask you about sleeping arrangements, because Alison's got two of the guest rooms all set up for you, or you can both stay in one if you'd—"

"We'll be staying in the R.V.," Blaine interrupted, and he tried not to feel the immediate regret at his harsh tone too keenly, adding, "I'm sorry Alison went to all that trouble."

"Well… You know your stepmom; it was no trouble at all. And the driveway's plenty big enough—"

"Dad, I'm driving so I should probably…"

"Right, of course, safety first. I'm—I'm excited to see you, Blaine."

"You too."

"Okay, I'll see you Saturday. Love you, son."

Blaine paused, the words almost spilling from his mouth automatically, but he bit them back. "Bye, Dad."

Silence descended again, lasting the remaining ten minutes it took him to get them back to the Walmart lot, and no sooner had Blaine cut the engine than he was out of the cab. He took a deep, gulping breath of the fresh night air and leaned against the sun-warmed metal of the R.V., waiting until the churning in his gut subsided. Everywhere he turned there was tension, thick as the fog that rolled in off the ocean on cold mornings back in Maine, and it was threatening to overwhelm him if he didn't just _do_ something, already. He needed to decompress, he just didn't know how, and that was what got to him more than anything.

"I'd tell you to go smoke a cigarette, but I think we both know how that'd turn out," Kurt said, leaning out of the open driver's side door. "You okay?"

"He's just so… Fucking oblivious, acting like we're best friends," Blaine spat. "Ugh. I just… I need to get laid."

"Well, yeah," Kurt said, climbing out of the cab and standing in front of Blaine with his hands in the pockets of his sinfully tight jeans. "So why don't you?"

"Can we not have this conversation again?"

"You brought it up. Blaine, I'm serious, you don't know what you're missing. And I've seen the way you look at—" Kurt stopped, cutting himself short, and didn't seem quite able to meet Blaine's eyes. _Oh, if only he'd just finish that sentence…_ "I've seen the way you look at some people. Is this some sort of internalized homophobia thing, are you ashamed, is that it?"

"No, I'm not ashamed. I'm out and proud, you know that."

"Well, sure, but it's not like you ever act on it. You're not a robot, I mean… If that movie taught us anything, it's that life's too fucking short. Everyone has needs, Blaine."

"And 'needs' are what got you kicked out of that bar when we were here the last time," Blaine spat, and Kurt's eyes narrowed dangerously. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that, you know I wouldn't ever judge you for…"

"For getting around."

"Kurt, I'm just… Look, sex complicates everything. Okay? I've seen it. I've _lived_ it," Blaine said, the old guilt coming back to haunt him with a vengeance, and dammit, he thought he'd put all this shit behind him once and for all. "Sex is the reason that my entire family got ripped apart, and I don't—I can't—it was my fault, it was all my fault—"

"Blaine, hey—Blaine, look at me," Kurt cut him off, both hands cupping his face and gently but firmly forcing Blaine to meet his eyes. "None of what happened between your parents—no, let me fucking finish. None of it was your fault, you have to know that. I'm sorry. Blaine, I'm sorry. Look… Okay, this is what we're gonna do. We're going to go back into the city, find the first bar we can, and get absolutely wasted."

"Since when did that ever solve anything?" Blaine asked, though the argument was weak. A night outside his head actually sounded pretty good. He sighed and covered Kurt's hands with his own, not wanting to lose the comforting touch just yet. "Okay. Okay, let's do it. What's the worst that could happen, right?"

* * *

"Ugh. I can't believe I had to get all dressed up in the parking lot of a fucking Walmart," Kurt griped as they stood outside the famous Woody's Bar, surrounded by students and edging gradually closer to the front of the line. They were close enough to hear the music pounding from inside, something fast-paced and frenetic.

Blaine swept appraising eyes over Kurt's outfit; a slim-fit pair of black dress slacks belted just above the hip paired with a deep purple shirt, sleeves rolled at the elbow, and a scooped-out black vest. The only accessory he wore was his black leather cuff, and it set off the rest of the ensemble perfectly. "You look great," he said into Kurt's ear, his voice low. _You look gorgeous, fantastic, breathtaking._ "Me, on the other hand…"

"Please, you look hot," Kurt waved him off. Taking in his own short-sleeved white shirt, black skinny tie and teal jeans, Blaine reminded himself that he wasn't there to pick up guys anyway. He was there to dance, to let himself loosen up and breathe.

When they reached the front of the line, they paid their $10 cover and went inside. The music was loud and got inside Blaine's head immediately, and he drummed his fingers on the bar as they waited for their beers.

He lost Kurt to the crowd after four drinks and about half an hour of close-but-not-too-close dancing, and he was fine with being on his own, even though he spent a couple of songs here and there dancing with a few attractive but ultimately uninteresting strangers. The longer the evening wore on, the more relaxed and pliant he felt. Kurt had been right: this was exactly what he needed.

Arms raised up over his head as he swayed his hips amongst the crush of bodies in front of the giant equalizer lit up on the wall, Blaine grinned when the crowd cheered at the next song, and the atmosphere changed almost immediately. The crowd seemed to slow and speed up at the same time, couples moving against one another while the rest bounced along with the unrelentingly fast pace and looked around to find a partner—with its pounding beat and dirty bass line, this was a song made for grinding.

Blaine wasn't surprised when he felt a warm body pressing into his back, fingertips dragging down the length of his raised arms, and he reveled in the contact, leaning into the touch and chasing for more. Bodies were packed tight around him, the beat pulsing through them, and he felt as if all of them were there simply to bear witness. He couldn't hear the moan he let out when he felt a mouth sucking and nipping at his neck but he felt it rumble up from deep in his chest, vibrating throughout his entire body. The stranger was pressed against him from head to toe and Blaine ground back in time with the beat. Arms wound tightly around him—the right all the way around his middle and the left a palm tight against his chest—and he reached back to bury his hand in the stranger's soft, thick hair, pulling him closer because the way he was worshipping Blaine's neck with his mouth was addictive in its filth.

Blaine opened his eyes and glanced down at the stranger's hands as they began loosening his tie and working open the buttons of his shirt, and just for a moment, he froze. As the song blended seamlessly through to a quieter, more intimate sounding song Blaine thought was called _Midnight City,_ the lights came up only to drop straight back down. In the sudden flash, he caught the most fleeting glance of a black leather cuff wrapped around the stranger's pale wrist, the sleeve of a purple shirt rolled to the elbow.

"Dance with me, Blaine, come on," Kurt said, the words cutting straight through the light beer haze that fogged Blaine's mind. He let out another moan as Kurt traced his tongue along the outer shell of his ear and nipped at the lobe, and couldn't help melting back into Kurt's body. "Been watching you all night; everyone has. You're so fucking hot…"

Kurt wrapped himself around Blaine completely, seemingly oblivious to everything that wasn't the feeling of Blaine's body against his own. He nudged Blaine's thighs apart, taking almost all of his weight and swaying them from side to side in time with the sudden and insane beat of the chorus.

"I want you so fucking badly; you don't even know how much. God, they've all been watching you and wanting a piece of you, but you're mine. You're mine…"

Eyes closed and lips bitten to the quick, Blaine ground down onto Kurt's thigh, tightening his grip on Kurt's hair to keep him there, keep him doing exactly this because this was... This was...

It wasn't enough. Maybe there would never be enough. But there was only one way to tell, and Kurt had moved from his ear down to his neck, still muttering words into his skin that Blaine could no longer hear, only feel the shapes of. Somewhere in his mind it dimly registered that Kurt was hard against him, moaning into the hollow of his neck with hot breath that smelled like whiskey. And it really, really wasn't enough—Blaine _wanted,_ felt buoyed up with the confidence to not only demand but to take and have and keep it all locked inside some warm and secret place.

Already aching with need and anticipation, he turned around and looked deep into Kurt's eyes, thumbing over Kurt's cheekbone and then taking him by the hand.

Getting back to the R.V.—thankfully parked just up the street—was a blur of shivers in the considerably cooler night air, rushed footsteps and Kurt's arm around his waist, teeth nipping at his earlobe every so often. It took almost everything he had to keep from pushing Kurt into a doorway and having his way, right there where anybody could see.

When Kurt finally stepped into his space in the privacy of the R.V.'s bedroom, his stare deep and searching, Blaine said nothing. Didn't even blink, just yanked his tie over his head and went to work on the buttons of his shirt. Kurt followed the motion with his pupils blown and a flick of his tongue that made him look ravenous. He hooked two fingers into Blaine's belt and pulled him past the mile-sized inches left between them, replacing Blaine's fumbling hands with his own, strong and sure, and that was what bridged the final gap in Blaine's synapses. He was wanted, and it was Kurt that wanted him—a weight was finally lifted from his shoulders and he let himself fall back onto the bed, Kurt following in the next heartbeat.

He hovered over Blaine for a moment, breathing hard as he pushed the shirt from Blaine's shoulders, and there was a single, suspended moment where he just stared at Blaine's parted lips, and then leaned down, down, past Blaine's mouth and sucked hard onto his pulse point.

Seconds passed that felt slower than molasses, the ringing in Blaine's ears still holding remnants of the beats to which they'd danced and touched and lost themselves. One moment, Kurt was all he could feel, all around him, and in the next moment there was no warm and firm body pinning him; instead there were hands divesting him of his jeans and underwear in one quick sweep and tossing them over the side of the bed.

Heavily, Kurt dropped to his knees and slid his arms under Blaine's thighs, thumbs hooking around and pressing into his hipbones as he gripped Blaine's sides and yanked him to the edge of the bed. Blaine swore he could feel the slightest stutter in Kurt's pulse against his skin just before Kurt licked up the underside of his cock and sank his mouth over the head, his eyes locked on Blaine's.

"God, your _mouth,"_ he breathed, descending into a moan at Kurt's ensuing dark chuckle, followed by the quick raking sound of a zipper being undone. Wet heat surrounded him and it was all Blaine could do to hold back from tumbling and disappearing inside of it all, nothing about it measured or patient, instead the inevitable boiling point of a gradually heating pot. It was too much, and he could feel the movement of Kurt's arm against his leg as he jerked himself off in tandem with working Blaine over like he was made for it. The thought only drove Blaine even further lost, spiraling down into the fuzzy insanity and tingling warmth that he could feel torpidly crawling up from the base of his spine.

Blaine pulled at Kurt's hair when he felt himself getting closer, tugged harder and harder to let him know, because he couldn't say his name. He couldn't let those four letters slip from his mouth because then this would become something real, something that with all of the facets of his inebriated state, he was so much less than equipped to deal with. Kurt shook his head slightly, humming around him with his fingernails digging painfully into the back of Blaine's hip, and Blaine jolted upwards with a cut-off groan.

He threw an arm across his eyes and pressed, pressed until yellow ink blossomed behind his eyelids like oil on water and he came harder than he ever had in his life, crying out and digging his fingers into the mattress. Kurt took it all, working him through it with his own muffled moan of arrival, until finally he pulled off with a lewd pop and dropped his forehead to rest on the inside of Blaine's thigh, warm breath fanning over the sensitive skin there.

"Fuck," Blaine managed as Kurt stood, already tucking himself back into his boxer briefs but leaving his pants undone. His lips were the color of a kiss they hadn't shared. Blaine sat up and forward, hooking his fingers beneath the vest that Kurt still wore, and pulled limply. "Come here."

"Blaine, I—"

"Just come here."

Tentatively and without meeting Blaine's eyes, Kurt climbed onto the bed and they crawled up the length of it together. Lying down, Kurt pressed his damp forehead against Blaine's neck, brushed a single kiss against his collarbone and exhaled shakily.

They were silent, and minutes was all it took for Kurt to fall asleep. Blaine wasn't as lucky, staring up at the ceiling until the edges of his vision blurred, and eventually he switched off the bedside lamp, wondering if he'd find answers swathed in darkness instead.

He didn't.

* * *

**Distance: 1,323 miles**


	11. Wreckage (Delaware)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 018: Thursday 4****th**** October, 2012  
****Wreckage (Delaware)****  
**

"_I'll try anything once."_

"_Except sex."_

"_And isn't that the truth? Alright, _Dead Poet's Society_ it is."_

* * *

Kurt surfaced slowly.

At first he felt the body-warmed cotton beneath his fingers and then skin, smooth and heated and there. Then came the deep satiation, the unfettered relaxation pooled inside every muscle, and the quiet need to stretch. It was all chased by the smacking of lips, the taste of stale alcohol and—tequila shots? Fries, maybe? He opened his eyes slowly, searching out daylight between the slats of the blind, but it was still mostly dark. Turning his head, he took in the sight of Blaine beneath the covers, his white shirt wrinkled and unbuttoned. He looked more relaxed than Kurt had seen him in a long while, and though things between them were still a little strained and he hadn't exactly intended on them sharing the bed again so soon, he couldn't help but smile.

Slowly, so as not to disturb him, Kurt stretched himself out of bed and retrieved a t-shirt, a soft hoodie, and his comfiest pair of sweatpants from the drawers at the end of the bed. He left the small bedroom, sliding the door closed behind him, and went about his usual morning routine, skipping the shower as he was craving pancakes and would want to work them off afterwards.

He was sitting in the driver's seat, sipping from a wetly steaming mug of French roast and watching the sunrise break through cloud after cloud when he realized that they were still in the middle of the city and should probably get an early start if they didn't want to get caught in the morning rush hour, all infuriating start-and-stop until they hit the highway. What time had they even gotten back to the R.V.? Kurt couldn't remember anything after catching glimpses of Blaine dancing in front of the equalizer through the crowd, but he knew it must have been late, and now it was barely seven-fifteen.

Deciding to let Blaine sleep, Kurt plucked the set of keys from the hook under the kitchen cabinets and soon enough, he was on the road.

"Crap," he muttered when he reached down to turn on his iPod and realized that it was still docked on the table in the living area. Shaking his head, he scanned through radio stations until he found one claiming to be the premier Philadelphia eclectic and alternative station. As Massive Attack's _Teardrop_ filled the cab, its repetitive beat and dark, almost foreboding piano refrain wrapping around him, Kurt tried to eschew the sense that something wasn't quite right as it settled upon his shoulders.

When Blaine finally appeared an hour later, bleary-eyed and yawning as he sank into the passenger seat, he was wearing the same clothes as the night before and had his shirt buttoned only halfway up. Kurt shot him a brief smile, turning down the volume on the radio, and forced himself not to let his eyes linger on the smattering of dark hair on Blaine's chest.

"You know, I really like this route we're taking. Gets us out of driving all the way across Pennsylvania," Kurt said.

"Small mercies."

"How'd you sleep?"

"Fine. Where are we?"

"About five minutes outside Smyrna. I figured we could find someplace for breakfast, because I'm craving pancakes like no other."

Blaine snorted, shook his head and looked out of the window at the other cars on the highway.

"What's with you? Are you hungover?"

"Do you remember anything that happened last night?" Blaine asked evenly.

"Not really," Kurt said slowly, a horrible thought occurring to him as he realized—he was craving pancakes. He only ever wanted pancakes after sex—and Blaine knew that as well as he did. "Oh god, did it happen again? I hooked up with some stranger, didn't I? Fuck."

"No, Kurt. You didn't hook up with some stranger," Blaine replied, his tone mild and controlled. Kurt breathed a sigh of relief—not only did he not want to be putting Blaine in that situation again, he really didn't want to be hooking up with strangers, particularly when he knew any hookup would be merely an unsatisfying substitute for what he really wanted, and really couldn't have.

"Thank god."

"Yeah. Where's the aspirin?"

"In the bathroom," Kurt said as Blaine passed by, and smiled to himself a little—Blaine was always grouchy the morning after a night out, at least until he'd eaten.

Kurt, on the other hand, was in such a good mood that his inexplicable craving didn't even occur to him again until he was seated opposite Blaine inside Smyrna Diner, enjoying the spacious yet homey throwback feel of the place as he perused the breakfast menu. Blaine had taken only a cursory glance at his own before slumping in his seat and turning to watch the morning drizzle pit-pit-pattering against the windows, and when Kurt began to sense that edge of tension creeping back in, he ordered an egg white omelet and home fries.

Something felt very, very wrong, and it wasn't until they had driven the rest of the way to Rehoboth Beach and parked by the Indian River Marina that Kurt realized why.

He was on the couch, ear buds in with his iPod on shuffle as he checked out the blogs of the few followers he had gained since his last video diary. Blaine stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips, and Kurt glanced up once, twice, and froze in his seat: on the back of Blaine's left hip were four red, crescent-shaped marks.

_Pushing through the crush of bodies around him, needing to get to Blaine and _show_ him how much he was wanted, give him everything he deserved. Moving against him, with him, arousal flaring sharp as he lavished attention on Blaine's tanned skin; wanting to groan every time he brushed against the stubble graze of his jaw. Hard, heavy, hot flesh on his tongue and himself in hand; wanting to cry at the beauty of the release; _finally, finally, finally._ Blaine's imploring eyes; curling into his warm body with an arm holding him close and then—_

Kurt shot to his feet and swallowed convulsively, panic rising up in his throat like bile. He had—_they_ had… Oh, god.

He didn't pause, didn't so much as blink, just took his iPod and ran, the R.V.'s side door banging shut behind him as he took off towards the north end of the marina. He was wearing the wrong shoes for running, didn't even really own a pair of running shoes, that was Blaine's thing—Blaine, whom Kurt had sucked off without a thought for what he was doing, _selfish, idiot,_ he'd ruined everything, and he wanted to scream when the song changed and Mumford & Sons were telling him he really fucked it up because he had, hadn't he? He'd fucked everything up completely, they wouldn't recover from this, _it wasn't supposed to be like this, it wasn't supposed to happen like this_—had he even _kissed _Blaine before he had broken every unwritten rule between them?

_Take, take, take it all, just like you always do, but not from him, never from him because he deserves so much better—_

"Kurt!"

His feet pounded harder on the uneven terrain, one of his ear buds slipped from his ear but he didn't care, just ran faster along the trail until the loop took him out to the spit of beach lining the shore, the sand little more than fine, weather-worn stones and pebbles and he couldn't breathe, couldn't think because it was all around him, the damage he'd done to them, and he could still taste—

"Kurt, stop!"

The rain was pouring and Kurt was freezing in just his t-shirt and sweats but he couldn't stop, couldn't do anything other than run from what he'd done because maybe if he got far enough away from it, put enough distance there that it was nothing more than a passing blip on the horizon of his mind then he could ignore it, get past it, act like it never even happened in the first place, and then Blaine was drawing level with him, taking his arm and yanking him to a stop.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Kurt," Blaine panted, hands on his thighs, and now that Blaine was in front of him, looking at him like he was utterly insane, Kurt truly felt it. "Ever thought about trying out for the Olympics? What the fuck _was_ that?"

With shaking hands, Kurt pulled the remaining ear bud from his ear and turned off his iPod, winding the cord around it to give himself a few precious seconds to try and compose himself. It didn't work; it only made him feel the cold of the rain pelting at him with full force, and he trembled uncontrollably.

"Kurt, _look at me,"_ Blaine instructed him firmly, taking him by the shoulders and his hands were _burning,_ and Kurt could feel Blaine's fingers gripped in his hair all over again.

"I've fucked everything up, haven't I?"

"Kurt, no, what are you talking about?"

"Don't tell me you don't remember what happened, Blaine. You weren't even half as drunk as I was."

Blaine took a breath and exhaled through his nose, shook his head and shivered when rivulets of water trailed free of his curls. "Of course I remember, I—I just…" he trailed off, scrubbing a hand over his face, and Kurt wished and hoped and prayed that Blaine wasn't about to ask if being drunk was the only reason he did it, if he'd meant even one second of it, because those were dangerous questions with even more dangerous answers.

"Just what?"

"Look, let's be honest, Kurt…" Blaine trailed off, and Kurt took a breath. After a long pause, Blaine cocked his head to the side, quirked his eyebrows and grinned. "I've got _moves."_

And just like that, the tension split and cracked and shattered. Kurt bit his lip.

"Such a dork," he muttered, and the ground stopped moving beneath his feet.

"Chalk it up to booze, temporary insanity, whatever you want. Let's just forget about it, okay?" Blaine asked.

With a deep, shuddering breath, Kurt nodded gratefully—he was off the hook even though that voice in the back of his mind that was growing louder with each passing day was telling him that he didn't want to be let off the hook at all. "You're freezing."

"I hadn't noticed."

Wordlessly, Blaine shucked off his leather jacket and tucked it around Kurt's shoulders. It smelled like rain and spice and home.

"Come on. What do we do when it rains?" Blaine prompted him. "We…"

"We shop," Kurt answered, rolling his eyes as they turned to retrace their footsteps back along the trail.

"A little bird told me that there's a great outlet mall nearby. And Kurt, did you know that in Delaware, you don't pay sales tax?"

"Why no, Blaine, I didn't know that," Kurt joked back with a giggle, and this—this was good. This was who they were: best friends who laughed and had fun and were there for one another no matter what, who they had been for sixteen years and would continue to be. They would stay that way, because it was who they were to one another, and nothing more—Kurt would make sure of it.

* * *

**Distance: 1,451 miles**


	12. Tsunami (Maryland)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 021: Sunday 7th October, 2012  
****Tsunami (Maryland)****  
**

"_Does it even count if only one scene of the movie was filmed there, though?"_

"_Kurt, it's _Hairspray._ Of course it counts."_

"_If you say so…"_

* * *

"Are you really sure about my Halloween costume?" Blaine asked as he idly plucked scales, shaking out his hand every now and then. He hadn't played seriously in nearly two weeks, and though his fingertips were aching as new calluses blossomed on top of the old ones, the feeling of the black cocobolo and white spruce of his father's Baranik Meridian in his hands was like undiluted magic.

Kurt glanced up from the crate of vinyl records he was flicking through, seated on the rich crimson overstuffed couch that stretched along the opposite wall of the music room in the Andersons' basement, where they had been since shortly after a surprisingly easy and pleasant dinner with Blaine's father and stepmother, Alison. Surprisingly easy and pleasant seemed to be the theme of the dinner, and Blaine had caught himself wondering numerous times throughout the day when the other shoe was going to drop.

"Why? That costume is fabulous," Kurt said. "Much better than your original idea of us going as a tube of lube and a condom. I mean, _really."_

"April told me it made me look like Elmo at a gay bar," Blaine replied.

"She's just jealous that she doesn't get to wear a Kurt Hummel original, too," Kurt said lightly, directing his gaze back to the LPs. "Besides, why are you worrying about Halloween now? It's weeks away. Unless—oh, you really _are_ unsure about your costume, aren't you?"

"No, no, it's nothing like that. You know I love my costume. I don't know; it's just been bugging me ever since she said it."

"Well, you could always go with the Freddie Mercury instead. But don't think I don't know exactly what you're doing," Kurt said lightly, and as he reached the last LP in the crate he flipped them back into place and looked Blaine in the eye, bracing his hands on either side of the crate's plastic edges. "You're doing that thing again."

"What thing?"

"Where you nit-pick out all the little things that you _think_ are wrong in order to avoid the big thing that's _actually_ wrong."

"Don't know what you're talking about," Blaine muttered to the guitar, focusing back on the grain of the wood beneath its perfect layer of varnish.

"Don't you dare give me that, Blaine Devon Anderson. There's obviously something that you're not dealing with, and you and I both know what it is," Kurt said. "So you're going to sing it out, and I'm going to listen, and then we're going to try and figure it out together. Deal?"

Blaine worried the inside of his cheek for a moment or two, then resettled the guitar across his lap and dropped one foot from the stool's footrest to the heavy rug. Silently, he ran his left hand along the neck of the guitar and found a chord, and retrieved a plectrum from the narrow, chest-height shelf bar that ran the length of the room. He strummed the guitar once, the pitch and timbre rich and utterly perfect, and Blaine knew immediately the song that he needed to sing: the song that had been looping in the back of his mind all day, and to which Kurt had introduced him in the early hours of a windswept morning almost seven years earlier.

He began to strum, quietly at first, then louder as he grew more sure of himself, and after the first few bars of swallowing down the constriction in his throat, he did the only thing he'd ever truly known to do when it all got too much.

"_Son, what have you done? You're caught by the river, you're coming undone,"_ he sang, feeling Kurt's eyes on him and letting his own voice carry him to the relief of escape, if only for six minutes of eight-bar measures. _"You and I were so full of love and hope. Would you give it all up now? Would you give in just to spite them all?"_

And that was the real crux of the matter: forgive or forget? The problem was that it wasn't just his father that Blaine needed to forgive—it was also himself. Logically, he knew that his coming out to his parents wasn't the reason for their divorce. It was just hard to believe it.

The song was over too quickly, the last strains of it swallowed in the soundproofing panels that covered the walls, and Kurt gently cleared his throat.

"When you're at a crime scene, and you're looking for the guilty one, where do they say you should look first?" he asked.

"What are you talking about?"

"You look for the person running away, Blaine."

"Okay…"

"And isn't that exactly what you've done ever since it happened?" Kurt asked, his voice forgiving but firm. "You've been punishing your father for something he did seven years ago because it was too big for you to process at the time, but since then it's only gotten bigger and now you're just too scared to open the box you shoved it into. Look, he can't undo it. But with all his heart, he's sorry. I can see it in his eyes, and you would too if you just took the time to look."

Kurt moved closer, stopping just before Blaine and laying his palm in the hollow of his neck; Blaine almost leaned into the touch, but let the hesitancy have him instead.

"Don't waste the relationships that you _could_ have, Blaine," Kurt said softly, and he swallowed thickly as his thumb rubbed absently just beneath Blaine's jaw. "Not all of us get that chance."

"You boys having fun down there?"

Blaine's head whipped towards the door to the basement and the sound of his father's voice. He froze, all at once feeling like he'd been backed into a corner while also knowing that Kurt was right. He should have stopped running years ago, but had never quite figured out what to do with the momentum.

"Yeah, Dad," he called out, keeping his voice light. Kurt's hand was gone from his neck, and Blaine avoided his eyes.

There was a beat of silence followed by footsteps padding softly down the carpeted stairs.

"You mind if I join in?" George asked as he poked his head through the door. "I've been meaning to get down here again for a while."

"You know, I think I might go find Alison. She mentioned her roses earlier, and Carole's always looking for gardening tips," Kurt said quickly, and with one last sharp glance at Blaine, made a hasty exit.

George stepped fully into the room and cleared his throat, gesturing to the guitar. "You play even better than the last time I heard you."

"Thanks," Blaine said, unable to dampen the small thrill in his chest at his father's proud tone, and it made him want to tell him more, tell him everything. "I was, um—I had a band in college."

"Yeah? Let me guess, you were the rock-star front man," George said knowingly as he seated himself where Kurt had been sitting only a minute earlier.

"Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that, but—yeah, I sang and played guitar," he said, grinning sheepishly. "We actually had our last gig together at The Cannery, the day before Kurt and I left."

"I bet that place still looks exactly the same."

"Same gnarly old fishers nursing beers under the marlin in the corner."

George chuckled, and things were easy… And Blaine should have known it was too good to last.

"That was always your mom's favorite place, and I could never figure out why. How's she doing, now?"

A body-wide sweep of tension; Blaine tried not to outwardly bristle. "She's fine," he said.

"Did I hear that she just got a promotion?" George asked.

It was nothing. It was _small talk._ And yet Blaine could feel the old anger dredging itself up, churning in his gut and rising, rising, rising, high enough to flood and overwhelm the dam he'd carefully and painstakingly constructed to protect himself from it.

"Yep. Three weeks before we left."

"Well, that's fantastic! How did you celebrate?"

"Dinner at The War Horse."

"Ah, another favorite," George said, a note of wistful nostalgia laced throughout his tone before he grew serious, eyebrows drawn down over his eyes. He leaned forward in his seat slightly and asked, "And is she doing alright since your grandfather passed?"

"Do you mean, 'Is she back on the meds?'" Blaine asked hotly, setting the guitar deliberately in its stand and staring his father square in the eye. "Because no, she's not. She doesn't need them anymore."

"Well, that's—that's good to hear," came the mollified reply. "And how was the, uh… The service? I would have liked to have been there to pay my respects, but—"

"Grandpa wouldn't have wanted them even if you'd been invited to pay them," Blaine cut him off, and the room went very still.

"Blaine, there's no need to be so rude," George said, his steely tone one that would usually have Blaine backing down, but this time it only fueled the hot wash of anger roiling in the pit of Blaine's stomach.

"Dad, I'm not a child anymore. You can't just tell me I'm being rude every time I tell you something that you don't want to hear."

"Now wait just a minute—"

"No. No, I won't. I'm an adult now—"

"You don't look like much of an adult to me—"

"And that's because you ran away! You never got to see me _become_ an adult because you weren't _there_ to see it! You cheated on Mom, and then you ran away because you couldn't deal with the consequences when she found out, and I bet you don't even have any idea of how bad it got, how she lost all of her friends, how she had a psychotic break while you were living it up with your secretary in fucking _Rockland—"_

"Blaine, stop," Kurt's voice came from the doorway, and Blaine whipped his head around at the sudden intrusion, not even having realized that he'd jumped to his feet. Kurt moved to step forward, but Blaine held up his hand.

"No, he needs to hear this," he said quietly, and turned back to his father, who was sitting with the fingers and thumb of one hand stretched across his brow, his face mostly hidden from view. He continued, in a disarmingly low and controlled voice, "Dad, what you did almost killed her. I lived at Kurt's house for six months of sophomore year while they kept her in that place full of crazy people to make sure that she wouldn't try to kill herself again, and where were you? Why didn't you come back?"

"I was too ashamed." His father's voice was gravel-rough and bitten off. "Blaine, there's nothing I can do now that will fix what I did to both of you, but I'm so sorry."

"Not good enough," Blaine said, shaking his head. "I was ashamed of you too, but I still needed you. I _hated_ you because of how much I still needed you, even after you broke everything."

And in the silence that followed, Blaine pushed past Kurt and ran from the room without so much as a backward glance, even when Kurt called after him. He took the stairs two at a time and made his way through the kitchen where Alison had poured them lemonade that afternoon. Passing through the wide archway into the grand foyer, Blaine's bare feet slapped against the smooth maple wood flooring and the marble of the wide, curving staircase that served as the foyer's focal point.

Before long, he had found his way to the guest room where he had left his things, fully aware of the fact that what he was doing entirely contradicted adult behavior. The door slammed shut behind him and he mentally cursed himself for having brought everything inside from the R.V. before really having a true hold on the temperature between himself and his father. He stood at the foot of the bed for a moment, fists opening and closing, and then gave in to the urge and collapsed face first on top of the duvet.

He lay there for hours, picking the day apart into its component minutiae as he watched the muted glow of the lanterns outside the window. Wind howled wildly outside the window, the sound of it like it was being blown across the lip of a beer bottle, and he could only just hear the music playing quietly from his laptop, on the floor by the side of the bed.

The day had washed over him in bright pockets of time that had burned pictures into his mind's eye with flashbulb precision: the scent of Old Spice that accompanied the first hug he had shared with his father in years; George nervously clearing his throat and suggesting a tour of the house; Kurt's thrilled expression when Blaine agreed that it would be a shame to waste such beautifully-appointed guest rooms; Alison's bright and pleased smile as she shooed all three of 'her boys' out the door for an afternoon drink, saying she had errands to run and that they should enjoy a guys' afternoon; a window table at Frazier's On The Avenue, and the startling amber clarity of his Heritage Bourbon juxtaposed against the swirling fog of Kurt's Grey Goose martini as his dad sipped an orange juice; laughing until his sides hurt and his dad's eyes were streaming at one of Kurt's perfectly timed Eddie Izzard references on the way back from the bar; giggling awkwardly around the dinner table at Alison's misapprehension that he and Kurt were an item.

The entire day, all of the smiles and the easy laughter, the renewed faith he'd felt blossoming in some deep and forgotten place… It all felt like a gargantuan joke had been played on him, and that the person behind it had taken an ice cream scoop to his insides, gouging out every last shred of his essence until nothing but a husk was left behind.

_Why isn't this more satisfying?_ Blaine thought. _I've been waiting years to say all of this to him. Now what?_

He changed into his pajamas and attempted to write an entry on his blog; he tried counting sheep. He even briefly considered jerking off to work out his frustration before thinking better of it—none of it was any use. Time dragged on by the second, and Blaine rolled onto his back, pillowing his head on his arms and counting the number of tiles from the wall to the small chandelier and back again.

The soft cotton of the sheets was too hot against Blaine's skin, and they tangled around his legs as he rolled onto his side in search of a cooler and more comfortable position. He wasn't even angry anymore, not really. The anger had been overtaken by a deep and encompassing sadness instead, one that took all its joy from reminding Blaine of everything he had forgotten. It had been so easy to hold onto the anger for so long that the good things had slipped his mind—his dad's pride at the things Blaine had accomplished, his ever-present and slightly ridiculous sense of humor that found the funny in almost everything, even his deep and abiding love for throwing Monty Python quotes into everyday conversation. It had all fallen by the wayside. He had _missed_ his father, and it was hitting him all at once just how much.

Blaine had been expecting two days of a bite-swollen tongue and an awkward knot in his throat, and instead, he'd gotten his dad back—right before he caused the chasm to widen further, ultimately unnecessarily. He should have moved on from this long ago—after all, in their own separate ways, both of his parents had—but for so many years he had been holding onto the anger and loss and utter heartbreak that it was burned into his skin; it had become part of who he was, and he was scared of finding out who he would be without it. Most of all, Blaine was scared that he would one day become his father, that he would end up breaking someone so badly that there was no recovering. He was like his father in a lot of ways—they shared the same sense of humor, the same infatuation and affinity with people, the same practical way of looking at things. Why should matters of the heart—and heartbreak—be any different?

_Tap-tap-tap,_ came the knocks on the door, and Blaine threw back the covers. He straightened his pajamas and crossed the room, cracking open the door to see Kurt standing before him with his arms crossed over his chest. They regarded one another for a long moment, and within a split-second of Blaine starting to speak, Kurt stepped forward and placed his hand over Blaine's mouth. Their faces were only centimeters apart and a moment had Blaine suspended, heart racing in his chest and blood rushing in his ears.

"Aren't you tired, yet?" Kurt asked, his eyes soft around the edges. After a pause, Blaine nodded, inhaling deeply and stepping back.

"Is anyone still awake?" he asked.

"Alison went to bed, but your dad's still out on the lanai," Kurt said, leaning against the doorframe and looking down at Blaine. "As proud as I was of you for using your words earlier, I think—"

"I know," Blaine cut him off, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders. "I know I have to fix this."

Kurt nodded, and stepped aside. "I'm going to bed, but I'll be up for a while if you want to talk afterwards, okay? Maybe we could watch our movie."

Blaine gave him a tight, crooked smile, murmured a thank you, and made his way downstairs. As promised, he found his father sitting in the middle of the curving taupe couch, one socked foot resting on the upholstered top of the coffee table. Blaine stood awkwardly half in, half out of the doorway out onto the lanai and looked at his father—really looked at the man before him, with his usually tidy salt-and-pepper hair slightly mussed, his eyes bloodshot and beset by dark circles, and the wrong kind of lines around his mouth. He looked more tired than Blaine felt.

Slowly, he moved toward the end of the couch and perched on the arm. He glanced out over backlit silhouettes of the roses bordering the waist-height wall separating the lanai from the yard, and searched for the words.

George sat straight and leaned forward, forearms resting along his thighs and his fingers splayed. Cautiously, he said, "Son, about what happened downstairs. Everything you said—"

"Dad, wait," Blaine interrupted, turning fully to his father but not yet able to meet his eyes. "I'm—really sorry. I completely embarrassed myself, and I was unforgivably rude to you and Alison… I usually have better manners than that, I swear."

"Blaine, the fact is that I let you down in the worst way a father can let his son down. I wasn't there for you when you needed me the most, and I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am."

"I—you know, I thought it would feel really great to finally get all of it out, but…" Blaine trailed off, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth and scrubbing his hand across the back of his neck. "But things are actually… Things are good now, for both of you. Mom has Stephen, and you have Alison, and I feel like I just watched a video of myself as a toddler throwing a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store."

"You had every right," George said gently, and Blaine shook his head.

"No. No, what I said earlier was right. I'm not a kid anymore, so I should stop acting like one."

Blaine knew that his father couldn't disagree, and he didn't, silence falling heavily between them like a curtain, tapestry-thick. But he also knew that his father desperately wanted to fix what he'd rendered asunder, and Blaine was finally beginning to admit to himself that it was a desire they shared.

"Do you miss being home?" George asked, the question throwing Blaine off and causing him to consider it for a moment.

"No. Brunswick, it… Never really felt like home, not even when—when things were good. Before," Blaine said, the words sounding stilted and awkward and true.

"Where _does_ feel like home?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"Well, whether you use it or not, you've always got a home here," George said, and Blaine's throat closed. "Do you think we could start fresh?"

Blaine shook his head, glancing down at the front of his threadbare Bowdoin tee and blinking back the prickle. "No. But—" Blaine stopped, looked up to meet his father's gaze, and said, "I think we can move forward."

* * *

**Distance: 1,451 miles**


	13. Black Waltz (Virginia)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 022: Monday 8th October, 2012  
****Black Waltz (Virginia)****  
**

"_I know I had a bad reaction to it the first time, but I was only fourteen."_

"_A census taker tried to test me once. I ate his liver, with some—"_

"_Blaine, finish that sentence at your own peril."_

* * *

"Huh. I guess things really did change while I was in London," Blaine said, sitting back in his seat. "You used to hate Rihanna."

"Still do," Kurt replied through gritted teeth.

"Then why are we listening to _Shut Up And Drive?"_ Blaine asked. "Were you going for irony?"

"I didn't even notice," Kurt said. It was true—Blaine had spent most of the song with his head and the upper half of his torso hanging out of the passenger side window like an overgrown puppy getting his first ride in a car, and while Kurt had to inwardly admit that he was divertingly appreciative of the view, his grip on the steering wheel was only now loosening as Blaine rolled his window two thirds of the way back up. "Skip it?"

"Definitely," Blaine said, and reached forward to switch to the next song on shuffle.

Kurt smiled faintly after the first few seconds that it took him to recognize Radical Face's _Welcome Home,_ the quiet and atmospheric sounds of soft wind chimes underscoring the relaxed and low strumming of an acoustic guitar. "Much better."

"Clouds are coming up on us," Blaine murmured, eyes trained on his wing mirror. "Do you think we'll outrun them?"

Kurt glanced into his mirror at the dark plumes gaining on the azure that stretched out above them, and shook his head. "We might've if you hadn't insisted on using a map instead of the GPS."

"Hey, you were the one who wanted to drive when this was _my_ big surprise for _you,"_ Blaine countered, holding his hands up. "At least we're nearly there."

"What's in Luray, anyway?" Kurt asked, taking in the land surrounding the highway that would in the coming months become winter scrub, and the white siding of the farmhouse-style homes beyond it.

"Just keep following the road," Blaine said, gesturing ahead. "And believe me, you're going to love it. Coop and I made our parents take us, like, once a month. We used to run around the place pretending we were Indiana Jones. Well—Cooper was Indiana Jones, I was always his sidekick."

Kurt bit the inside of his cheek and schooled his expression—Blaine had always been a little touchy about being in his older brother's shadow, though Kurt knew that despite his level of self-involvement, Cooper generally meant well. "So it's somewhere you can have adventures, then."

"The best adventures."

"And Indiana Jones generally preferred running around jungles and caves…" Kurt trailed off, a horrible thought forming itself from the jumbled mess that had taken up residence in his mind somewhere in Delaware. "Last time I checked, there were no jungles in Virginia."

"Turn right."

"Blaine, where—" Kurt abruptly fell silent as he pulled the R.V. to a stop at the red light before the turning. He leaned forward over the steering wheel and looked disbelievingly at the tall green sign topped with something resembling a stout, misshapen dog bone, its white letters proclaiming 'Luray Caverns.' "Seriously?"

Blaine didn't even seem to be listening, rather he was grinning out of the window like someone possessed, looking giddy with the joy of being somewhere that Kurt realized represented only good things. As the light turned green and Kurt slowly swung the R.V. to the right, Blaine bounced once in his seat and shot Kurt a radiant smile.

"Does it really feel _that_ good to be back?" Kurt asked.

"It really does," Blaine said, leaning so far forward over the dashboard that his seatbelt locked. "You'll come exploring with me, right?"

"Just so long as I don't have to wear a fedora," Kurt answered, worrying his lip and hoping against hope that whatever tour upon which they were about to embark didn't involve episodes of total darkness. "I'm not nearly swarthy enough to rock that look."

Blaine laughed at that, and carried on smiling as they parked and made their way past the tall walls of the Garden Maze and into the visitor's center. Once he had handed over their tickets and signed them in with no small measure of glee, all of which Kurt observed with a half-amused, half-trepid smile, they were met by a girl who looked to be no older than a college freshman. Over a plain white button-down tucked into a pair of khakis, she wore a hunter green blazer, the chest pocket branded with 'Luray Caverns' above the tagline, _what will you discover?_ Kurt simply hoped he would discover the way out or, failing that, the gift shop. At the very least he could buy Blaine something suitably tacky and obnoxious as punishment for dragging him into the midst of all this nature.

"Hi, guys! I'm Jen," the guide introduced herself, her long brown ponytail swinging from side to side as she looked between them before balancing her clipboard on her hip to shake each of their hands in turn.

"I'm Blaine, and this is Kurt," Blaine provided, shooting her a charming smile.

"Happy to have you both," she said brightly. "Have either of you visited Luray before?"

"He has," Kurt said, inclining his head toward Blaine.

"He isn't really much for nature, but I'm hoping to change that," Blaine chimed in, and bumped his hip against Kurt's.

"Honestly," Jen began, leaning closer and lowering her voice conspiratorially, "I hate nature. But that's the great thing about this experience, because it's more about the history and what _you_ take away from it.

"Now, we're pretty quiet around here today, and usually they don't run the tours without at least eight people," she continued, and from the corner of his eye, Kurt saw Blaine's shoulders droop. "But since you guys are the only booking for the next hour or so, I don't see why we can't go do our thing."

"Great!" Blaine exclaimed, before turning a thousand-watt smile on Kurt. "What do you think?"

Kurt looked at him, taking in the flush of amber hope in Blaine's eyes and the slight twitch in the very tips of his fingers as he brought his hands together and clasped them in front of his chest with a pout. Already beginning to feel his resolve crumble, Kurt glanced around the brightly-lit and inviting visitor's center, the snapshots of the caverns adorning the walls sparking in him a somewhat foreign sense of intrigue.

"Alright, let's go."

* * *

The caverns were magnificent; there were no other words to describe them. Kurt found himself unexpectedly enthralled in each and every room, and despite their repeated attempts to draw him into their chatter, he paid almost no attention to Jen and Blaine's animated discussion about the history of the place. He was strangely spellbound by the quiet, natural grandeur of the place, and by the time the tour was nearly over, his neck was aching from how much time he had spent looking up.

"Told you this place was magical," Blaine said, his voice carrying over the harmonies resonating from the Great Stalacpipe Organ. Kurt could feel the lower notes reverberating deep within his chest, and he shot Blaine a genuine and humbled smile.

"You were right," he conceded, quickly adding, "but please don't do the told-you-so dance. We're still in a cave."

"I swear, you guys make one of the cutest couples I've ever seen," Jen intoned, and both Kurt and Blaine turned to her in alarm.

"Oh no, we're not—I mean, um, we're…" Blaine trailed off, stammering.

"Yeah, no, we're—we're just friends," Kurt agreed, feeling almost inexplicably as if he was lying through his teeth.

"But—crap, I'm sorry," Jen said, glancing down at her clipboard and back up again. "It's just—you guys, with all your sniping at each other, and the—the _looks,_ you know, you're like one of those fabulous married couples and… And I'm just going to stop talking now."

The organ's music faded for a few moments as one song ended and the next began, and during the pregnant silence, Kurt could feel Blaine's eyes on him. He didn't dare look back. Since Rehoboth Beach, they had each retreated to their separate trenches. Whatever lay between them had become as no-man's land: to be traversed carefully—if at all—and with no small measure of trepidation. And most definitely not in a damned cave.

"Only as awkward as we let it be," Jen finally said with a bright smile, and as she inclined her head toward the next archway to begin leading them on, Kurt breathed a sigh of relief.

When they were in the final room of the tour, Blaine turned to Jen with all lingering traces of awkwardness swept away and asked, "Do you guys still do the same thing with the lights in here?"

"_How_ do you keep remembering this stuff?" Jen asked incredulously, and Blaine shrugged with a grin.

"What thing with the lights?" Kurt asked, looking to Jen for the answer.

"Okay, so we usually finish out the tour by turning off all the lights and letting people experience what true darkness is like, and what it would have been like for the first people to discover the caves," Jen explained, and Kurt immediately tensed. "Really get a feel for it, you know? I mean, there's nothing else like it. Usually there are two guides with a group, and one of us will go switch off the lights while the other stays down here, but since there's only one of me, can I trust you guys not to go insane and start creating havoc?"

"Of course," Blaine answered matter-of-factly, waving her off.

"Alright, then. I'll be back in a couple minutes," Jen said, and turned on her heel, striding away towards the exit and calling over her shoulder, "Stay put, guys!

Kurt let out a weak, nervous chuckle, trying to square his shoulders and hold his head high. It wasn't that he was afraid of the dark. Not at all. On the contrary, he had always found a solitary kind of peace in being enshrouded by it. Getting up to use the bathroom only an hour after turning in and following the thin line of yellow around a doorframe, or waking up before sunrise in the middle of winter and wrapping his cold fingers around a mug of coffee in the morning silence of his kitchen were things that he found calming.

Spending three pitch-black minutes in the middle of a cave, on the other hand…

"Hey. You okay?" Blaine asked, stepping a little closer and carefully examining Kurt's face.

"Fine. Forewarned is forearmed, right?" Kurt joked feebly, and Blaine's brow furrowed.

"Are you sure? I can call her back and—"

Darkness fell as sharp and quick as the blade of a guillotine, and Kurt's head snapped upwards almost involuntarily, a gasp getting caught in the back of his throat. He turned his head from side to side, suddenly feeling as if it wasn't just the light that was gone, but his sight as well. Never before had he experienced this kind of complete, oppressively encompassing darkness, and after a few seconds it seemed to close about him.

"Kurt?" Blaine asked, tentatively. His voice was loud, as if he was mere inches away, but Kurt could have sworn they had been standing further apart than that. "Kurt? You okay?"

"Mmhmm," Kurt managed, his own voice sounding louder than normal. It was as if the darkness was acting as an amplifier, a giant bowl where every single rustle of fabric and distant trickle of water wound him up tighter and tighter. He wrapped his arms around his torso, closing in on himself as even the sound of his breathing became louder and he heard Blaine shifting from one foot to the other.

It was cold down in the caves, far colder than the cloudy yet mild day outside, and even so, as soon as Kurt began to think about how far underground they were, his palms began to sweat and his breathing became shallow, as if the oxygen was hard to come by. He felt a pressure on his chest, his heart racing the more he panicked and gasped for air, and he pressed his palm to the base of his collarbone to try and counter the band squeezing him, but it was suffocating, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't—

"Hey, hey," Blaine whispered, taking Kurt's hand in the darkness, and Kurt's heart began to race even faster, deafening and surely Blaine could hear it, hear the effect a mere touch had even when Kurt was panicking more than he could process. "Kurt, it's okay, I'm right here. Just come towards me, okay?"

Kurt blithely followed Blaine's words, shuffling closer with his breathing becoming harsher and harsher, clear air an almost forgotten sensation that he chased after even though it felt fruitless. There was a roaring whoosh tearing through his head, and he only dimly registered Blaine pulling him closer, flush against his body with his fingers carding into the back of Kurt's hair and Kurt's forehead pressed to his temple.

"Just focus on me, okay? Just focus on me," Blaine whispered rapidly, swaying them both on the spot. "Breathe, sweetheart."

Kurt closed his eyes and tried to focus on their movement back and forth, back and forth, but there was no discernible rhythm and every time he thought he'd found one to count along to it evaded him again and his breath kept on stuttering, stammering, getting stuck on the way to where it needed to be and just as he was beginning to feel lightheaded, Blaine started to hum. Quietly at first, almost too quiet to hear even in the utterly concentrated silence of the cave, but the melody formed and grew until Kurt recognized it, until Blaine found its rhythm and swayed them in time.

"_Somewhere over the rainbow way up high,"_ he sang, voice low and clear and cutting through the dark, _"there's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby."_

Back and forth, slowly in and slowly out, _somewhere over the rainbow,_ back and forth, slowly in and slowly out, _skies are blue._ Degree by degree, Kurt got his breathing under control. He found himself almost wrapped around Blaine, in itself an entirely different kind of containment, one of safety and care that took him back to a boy of only six years old, the very first time they had watched _The Lion King_ together and Kurt had had no idea what was going to happen when the antelope began their stampede. Blaine had held his hand and then all of him, keeping him together just as he was doing now.

"_Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are—"_

Blaine stopped short as light flooded back in, and for the first time since he had taken his hand, Kurt felt the slightest of tremors in Blaine's body. They swayed on the spot for a moment more, until Blaine cleared his throat and smoothed his fingers over the back of Kurt's hair. Shakily, Kurt exhaled the last breath he had taken, feeling it flow warmly between them.

He opened his eyes, still unwilling to move so much as an inch, and wondered if a kiss on the cheek to say thank you would be a step too far into no-man's land.

"Are you okay?" Blaine whispered, and Kurt nodded, finally shifting his weight back onto his own two feet. The hand Blaine had worked into his hair slid down the side of his neck and brushed off his shoulder, taking warmth with it. "Sure?"

When Kurt didn't respond, Blaine ducked into his downcast eye line and looked at him searchingly. The space between them was dense with tension, Blaine unconsciously licking his full lips, and Kurt scrabbled around for something to say instead of watching the movie reel unfurling in his head; a swell of music or maybe none at all, lighting just the right amount of dim and atmospheric, and Kurt rocking forward on his toes to crush his mouth to Blaine's, hands fisted in the front of his soft maroon cardigan.

"Do you think _Parks and Rec_ was right about cave sex?" he asked, simply blurting the first thing that came into his head, and immediately wanted to slap himself across the face.

"I don't know, do you wanna find out?" Blaine countered, his tone one of innocence and earnest, yet still somehow loaded.

Kurt let out a tremulous chuckle and stepped completely out of Blaine's hold, brushing himself off and feeling as if he really had become that six-year-old boy again, needing his best friend to hold him together because he couldn't quite do it himself.

"Come on," he said when he glanced up and saw Jen approaching from around the corner. "Let's go find the gift shop. There's probably an obnoxious t-shirt that _I_ can buy for _you."_

"Virginia is for lovers?" Blaine asked, and Kurt smiled thinly.

"Something like that."

* * *

**Distance: 1,583 miles**


	14. Prescience (North Carolina)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

* * *

**Day 024: Wednesday 10th October, 2012  
****Prescience (North Carolina)****  
**

"_So… I think we should leave _The Green Mile_ for later, and for North Carolina… Hmm."_

"_What about_ Patch Adams?"

"_It's like you read my mind."_

* * *

Blaine was noticing more and more of what he'd decided to call 'Kurtisms,' things that he'd never noticed before—though maybe he had, but he hadn't been looking at Kurt through this laser beam of attraction and want, where every movement caught his attention anew.

They were little things, really: the way he would gaze out of the passenger side window and hold the tip of his left thumb between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, pressing and rolling until the flesh turned white; how he would over-stretch and roll his shoulders when reaching for a glass on the cupboard's top shelf and sigh because it obviously felt good; the fact that every conversation was a surprise, and never truly finished.

"Have you ever read the story of Patch Adams, though?" Kurt asked, half-turning toward Blaine as they strolled through the Downtown Market in Asheville. The question came out of the blue, but was asked as if their discussion of their chosen movie for North Carolina hadn't ended over three hours earlier.

"No," Blaine admitted. "Don't tell me it's even sadder than the movie."

"No, that's the thing. It's not really sad at all."

"Well… That's good, isn't it?"

"Of course. I don't know, I guess I just can't help but feel a little cheated."

"They did the same thing with Erin Brockovich, though. It all comes down to what's good storytelling and what isn't."

"Speaking of which, we should probably try and figure out what the point of our documentary is," Kurt said, adding with a sly grin, "You know, other than two cute film grads touring the US."

"I was hoping that we'd kind of stumble upon an idea," Blaine replied. "And by 'we' I mean 'you,' since you're the one who's been doing the most filming. Setting up the shots, checking the lighting…"

"It takes time to get the perfect shot. And besides, it's all good practice."

"What are you doing with all that footage, anyway?"

"Just transferring it to the computer," Kurt answered a hair too quickly. "Why do you ask?"

Blaine asked because he knew exactly where a lot of his own footage was ending up. Shots of asphalt being consumed by the R.V., sunsets from the passenger side window and snatches of conversation with Kurt were all going straight to his blog—in lieu of proper entries, since he'd had neither the time nor the privacy. That very morning, for instance, was the first time he had risen before Kurt since the start of the trip. He'd only managed a paltry three paragraphs by the time Kurt had surfaced, bright-eyed and dancing around the kitchen as he made breakfast, The Black Ghosts' _Full Moon_ playing from his docked iPod and his hips swaying sensuously around the beat. The blend of his movements was so without discernible end that it was as if the song was his dance partner, leading and turning and dipping him across the kitchen with such fluid grace that, had he not known otherwise, Blaine could have sworn that Kurt was a dancer.

Their trip the previous day to explore the Biltmore Estate, coupled with the lingering, renewed memories from visiting Luray, had sparked in Blaine his old sense of adventure. Only this time, it wasn't a place he wanted to explore. It was how, with the merest subtle shifts of muscle in the darkness, Kurt could have Blaine shivering and wanting to run cartographer's fingers over his shoulder blades, the planes of his torso, and down, down, down.

"No reason," he finally said, swallowing hard and eyes landing on a stall further up the way where a small African woman sat, surrounded by wooden tiles and wall hangings. The words he had written that morning played upon his mind as they drew closer to her, and his mind circled back around to the wondering—always the wondering. Wondering if it would be weird if things between he and Kurt weren't at all awkward and instead they had just fallen into one another like it was something they had always been meant for, like their love had been bought and paid for years ago and they were only just growing into it.

As they arrived at the stall, the bright yellow of the woman's clothing a stark contrast to the muted earth hues and wood tones surrounding her, she looked up at them with wide, deep-set eyes. Her face was weathered, dark freckles littering her cheeks and crowds of lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that belied decades. Her gaze briefly swept across Kurt and landed upon Blaine, boring into him with such intensity that he felt as if she could see straight into his heart to pick out the four letters he was sure were forming there.

"What are your names?" she demanded, her English heavily accented.

"I'm Blaine, and this is Kurt," he answered.

"I am Nanyanika. They call me Nan," she said, gesturing around herself and offering her hand to Kurt. After he had shaken it, she offered it to Blaine, holding on when he tried to let go. "You belong, yes?"

"Belong?" Blaine repeated.

"You are his," Nan said, glancing between them. "He is yours."

Blaine shook his head. "No, we're not together. Just friends."

"Hmm. 'Just friends,' I hear this a lot," Nan said, dropping Blaine's hand and reseating herself on her stool. From beneath her simple wooden workstation, covered in a deep green cloth that was patterned with the same symbols surrounding her, she pulled two small paintbrushes and pots of what looked like black ink and gestured for them to sit down.

"It's true," Kurt said, crossing one long leg over the other and loosening his thin scarf a little. "We've been best friends since we were six years old."

Nan shook her head, her shoulders slumping as she said, "They come to me to see their life and never believe. They keep their eyes closed on purpose, don't let themselves see. They think good means scary. So you have come to me to see your life, yes?"

"Um," Blaine said articulately, and looked at Kurt.

"Yes," Kurt answered her, the expression on his face one of curiosity. Blaine had to admit that, though he had never been much for spirituality—and Kurt, he knew, even less so—he was similarly intrigued.

"Sleeve up, arm out," Nan commanded, and Kurt quickly complied, stretching his arm palm up across her workstation. She dipped one of the paintbrushes into the ink pot, loosely holding Kurt's wrist with her free hand and, without ever taking her eyes off Kurt's face, began to paint. "I paint three things: past, present, and future. We see what comes out after."

Blaine watched in silent amazement; Nan couldn't see what she was doing, but three symbols quickly took shape in a shock of black against the pale skin of Kurt's underarm. He swallowed; they had often talked about getting tattoos, musing over placement and what they would be, but they had never actually gone ahead and done it. Seeing the markings on Kurt's skin brought Blaine a shiver.

"I come from the Ashanti in Ghana, and these symbols are the Adinkra. Very important to my people, and tell us a lot," Nan said, finishing the third symbol with a deft flick of her wrist and looking down at her work. She pointed to the first symbol, closest to Kurt's hand—it looked like a ladder. _"Owuo atwedee._ You have death in your past, yes?"

Kurt raised his chin, nodding almost imperceptibly, and Nan gave his wrist a light shake.

"This is why we paint past so close to your hand, so you can let go," she said, and quickly moved on to the second symbol: two swirls forming a heart. "This is good sign. _Sankofa;_ means you are learning from your past." Of the third, a diagonally-crossed diamond, she said, _"Eban,_ for your future. For you, this is sign of love and security."

Blaine watched Kurt trace the tip of his index finger around the _eban_ symbol, and blinked in surprise when Kurt agreed with Nan's earlier sentiment, murmuring, "They _are_ important. I wish they were permanent."

Nan shook her head and pointed to the past and present symbols. "Very soon, you let go of this. Present become your past," she said, sliding her fingers towards Kurt's palm. "Your future become your present, and you get new future. You move forward, don't get stuck."

Kurt nodded and, seemingly satisfied, Nan released his arm and held out her hand for Blaine's. He hesitated only for a moment before settling his wrist onto Nan's palm. She didn't start painting straight away as she had with Kurt; with her eyes she seemed to be sifting through the innermost workings of his mind until she found the thing she was looking for, whatever it was, and it took all of his willpower not to break the eye contact.

"You are running," Nan said simply, and Blaine finally felt the wet press of ink against his skin. "But not away, and this is most curious thing about you. I think you were running away, but not now. Now you are running _to."_

Blaine's gaze slid into the corner of his periphery but he didn't dare look up at Kurt—not now, not when every look had become loaded, like a powder keg packed to the brim and just waiting for the slightest of sparks to ignite it. They were carrying it between them as if it were a tangible thing, slowly circling a flame, and all the while Blaine was losing purchase.

"This is not usual, not usual," Nan said as she sat back, and Blaine realized that the soft bristles of her paintbrush had ceased their movements against his skin. He took in his three symbols; his past could almost have been a basic Celtic knot, his present was something like the letter X, and his future—the same as Kurt's. "I see _mpatapo_ for past, which is peacemaking. You stopped fighting. This explain running. For present, you have _fawohodie;_ this means you are free. Yes?"

Blaine nodded dumbly, struck by the accuracy of Nan's insights.

"And your future, this is not usual at all. These lead you same place as 'just friend,'" she said, her downturned mouth twisting into something that could have been a wry smile. "But for you, _eban_ is sign of home and love as one."

"Maybe there's some cutie back in Brunswick waiting for you," Kurt murmured, nudging Blaine's shoulder with his own.

Nan shook her head, gesturing emphatically to Blaine's future symbol. "Home and love, see? They are same thing," she declared, and then sighed heavily, standing to reach one of the displays of small wooden tiles that hung around her stall. Both Kurt and Blaine followed suit, watching as Nan retrieved two tiles bearing the _eban_ symbol, and held them between her palms. "But you will _not_ see, not yet. You keep your eyes closed and complicate things. So you take these, and work for them."

Blaine reached into his pocket for his wallet as Kurt took their tiles, but Nan waved her hand dismissively. "Come back and see Nan when your future is present," she said, and for a moment that wry smile was back and Blaine couldn't quite figure out if she just wanted to see them again, or if she wanted to be proved correct in her thinly-veiled predictions.

"Thank you," he said almost distractedly, too many thoughts turning over in his mind to form one coherent string.

"It was lovely to meet you," Kurt added. Nan inclined her head.

"You both run, see what happens," were her final words before she sat down again, putting away her brushes and ink.

When they were far enough away so as to be out of earshot, Kurt whirled on Blaine with a bewildered glance. "That was insanely weird, right? It wasn't just me?"

"I don't know. She seemed to have us figured out," Blaine said with a shrug he didn't quite believe.

"The past and present stuff, maybe," Kurt conceded. "But the future stuff… I mean, _you_ know I'm not really into—relationships, and… And what was all that about you 'running to' something?"

"No idea," Blaine said, and took a deep breath, trying to shake Nan's words and the weight of her gaze. He could almost still feel it lingering upon him, along with the words ringing in his ears—_now you are running _to.

The sun was finally breaking through the thick bank of cloud that hung heavily above them, and Blaine raised his hand to shield his eyes. "I'm starving. Wanna check out that café further up?"

"Actually, do you mind if we head back to the R.V.?" Kurt asked. "I found a pasta recipe I've been dying to try. Plus, I need to catch up on a few emails, and since the park has Wi-Fi…"

Blaine grinned, rolling his eyes fondly and gesturing for Kurt to lead the way.

* * *

**Distance: 1,970 miles**


	15. Softly, Softly (South Carolina)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

**IMPORTANT NOTE:** I have chosen to go spoiler-free this season, meaning that I know nothing about upcoming songs, storylines, plot points etc. If you could please refrain from posting any spoilers in your reviews, that would be great! Thank you :)

**WARNING:** This chapter contains discussion of past character death, so please tread carefully.

* * *

**Day 025: Thursday 11th October, 2012  
****Softly, Softly (South Carolina)****  
**

"_How about _The Notebook?"

"_A beautiful love story like that? You're softening, Kurt."_

"_What's beautiful about it is the cinematography. Something I can aspire to."_

* * *

"I won't be long," Kurt said, already unclipping his seat belt as he cut the engine. "Just wait here?"

"Where are we?" Blaine asked. He glanced through the windshield at the other cars in the parking lot.

"Just something I need to see," Kurt muttered, grabbing his phone from the dashboard and repeating, "I won't be long."

"Kurt, stop," Blaine said, reaching across and taking Kurt's arm. "Why are we here?"

Kurt paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. He slipped his arm out of Blaine's grasp and, just before he opened the door and hopped out of the cab, simply said, "This is Mom's alma mater."

He walked quickly up Greene Street, following the directions he pulled up on his phone and hoping that his dad hadn't chosen today to check their progress on the GPS. It was a beautiful sunny day, but Kurt struggled to feel the warmth beating down upon him as he made his way closer to the campus proper. The two events that had led to Kurt cutting through downtown Columbia instead of heading straight to Sesquicentennial State Park were, by rights, inconsequential. Nothing on their own: a pair of fleeting reminders of the past he tried not to think too much about—a brief sting to the heart and mind, but ultimately like raindrops slowly rolling from roof tiles. In quick succession, however, was another matter entirely.

It had all begun with the song that cut a swath through the radio static as they passed state lines, Blaine reaching over to turn it up and shimmy in his seat.

"_And I know that this must be heaven, how could so much love be inside of you?"_ Stevie Wonder had sung, his voice as full of mirth and joy as Kurt remembered: sitting at the kitchen table when he was still young enough that his feet didn't quite reach the linoleum and watching his parents dance; later, joining his dad in his mother's place as she sat, hands on her heaving belly and giggling as Kurt tried to teach his father proper turn-out.

He had reached over to change the station but withdrew at the last moment, letting it in and feeling the wistful pain instead of pushing it away. His grip on the steering wheel had remained tight until his fingers were aching from it.

The first time they'd passed a sign for the University of South Carolina bearing the legend 'Go Gamecocks!' Blaine had said, "Oh my god. It's too easy, right?"

"Way too easy," Kurt had replied offhandedly, before doing a double-take and craning his neck around as they'd sped past, another memory of his mom—shuffling around the house with a cold, the long sleeves of her USC sweatshirt hanging over her hands—rising in the forefront of his mind and leaving him with the feeling of having the breath punched from his chest. He remembered crawling up onto the couch beside her as she blew her nose and tracing the letters on her sweatshirt with the tip of his index finger, a rerun of an old _American Bandstand_ episode playing in the background. He'd asked for a story, and she'd told him about the fountain where she had first met Kurt's dad.

Dappled sunlight playing across the sidewalk, he glanced up at the blue sky through the trees and squared his shoulders as he drew closer to where he could already hear the fountain over passing cars and small groups of chattering students apparently heading home for the day. As he passed from beneath the cover of the trees and sunshine broke over him once more, he wrapped his arms around himself and crossed the terrace with long strides.

Standing at the edge of the fountain, Kurt expected to feel more of a sense of closure, peace, anything.

He felt nothing. What he had was only memories of stories told to him, not memories of his own. This place meant nothing to him anymore, even though one day many years ago it had felt like a magical promised land.

Exhaling deeply, he sat down on the very edge of the low wall that bordered the fountain and ran the tips of his fingers back and forth through the cool water, trying and failing to keep his mind blank. His thoughts were weighted heavily with something that had been creeping in the recesses of his mind since driving past the cemetery the day he and Blaine had left Brunswick, keeping to the shadows and biding its time mostly out of sight, but always a presence that Kurt could feel.

"Excuse me," came a gruff voice from somewhere above him, and as Kurt looked up to find its source, he shielded his eyes from the sun's glare and found himself face to face with a man who looked like a professor approaching retirement age. His hair and mustache were light gray fading into white, and he was clad in a tweed jacket one would expect to see on any stereotypical movie professor. With a genial smile that reminded Kurt of Blaine's grandfather, the gentleman gestured to the wall next to Kurt. "Would you mind if I sit?"

"Of course not, please," he answered.

"These old legs are certainly not what they used to be," the man said as he sat down, his voice holding a mild South Carolina accent. For a moment, he regarded Kurt with appraising eyes. "You're not a student here, are you?"

"What gave me away?" Kurt asked, suddenly wondering if he was breaking a rule.

"Ah, I'm just good with faces," the man said, waving him off. "You do look remarkably like one of my ex-students, though." After a somewhat awkward pause, the man held out his hand. "John Goldman, professor of psychology."

"Kurt Hummel, nice to meet you."

"Hummel?" John repeated, and Kurt nodded. "Tell me, you wouldn't happen to be related to Elizabeth Sheridan, would you?"

Kurt froze, breath catching in his chest. "That was my mother's maiden name."

"I knew it. I knew it!" John exclaimed, his lined face lighting up. "I never forget a face, and you look just like her."

"Did you—was she a student of yours?"

"Indeed she was. One of my favorites, though I'd deny it if anyone ever asked me. How is she these days, is she well?"

"I—"

It was the same every time—the throb and stutter in his heart, the thickness in his throat—and Kurt swallowed convulsively, hungry with a sudden need to learn more about his mom from someone whose memories of her weren't colored by the tragedy of her death.

"She died when I was eight," Kurt said, steeling himself to give the same explanation his father had recited by rote to every last person that had called their house in the weeks afterward. "She and my dad were on their way back from a Lamaze class one night, and they hit a patch of ice and spun out of control. My dad was fine, just a couple of bruises, but there just… Wasn't anything they could do for her."

"Oh, my. I'm so very sorry to hear that," John said gravely. "And she was pregnant?"

"With my baby sister. There was a, um… They couldn't save them both so they tried to save my mom, but… Her heart stopped, and they tried to do compressions but she had a—a punctured lung—"

"Kurt," John intoned, his hand a heavy and unexpected comfort on Kurt's shoulder.

He reached up to wipe at his eyes and found them dry. The night it had happened, Kurt had been sleeping over at Blaine's house and they had both awoken to the sound of the static at the end of Blaine's videotape of _The Lion King._ As Kurt had been scrambling around for the remote to switch off the television, they'd heard voices, and Blaine had convinced him to sneak downstairs and eavesdrop.

Kurt hadn't cried since that night, after the light from the open doorway had spilled out around his dad's crumpling silhouette and the world as he'd known it had ended with only a handful of shattering words. He'd run out to Blaine's backyard in his bare feet and flannel pajamas, screamed himself hoarse at the sky because wasn't his mommy going to be up there, just like Mufasa? Wasn't she going to be up there?

"Why isn't she up there, Blaine?" Kurt had demanded when Blaine had circled around to stand in front of him, and even though Blaine had told Kurt he didn't know and Kurt had hated him for it, Blaine had still caught him as he'd fallen forward, and had held onto him until his dad had come to carry him back into the house.

"I'm so very sorry, Kurt," John repeated, ducking his head to catch Kurt's gaze.

Abruptly, Kurt asked, "What was she like when you knew her?"

John sat back, the corners of his mustache twitching upwards with a smile. "Quiet, bookish. And smart, so very smart. She and your father were inseparable. He didn't even attend college, but whenever I saw her around campus, there they were together. She was always smiling when he was around."

Kurt scratched at the backs of his fingers. "Dad remarried when I was sixteen. She—Carole, she was one of the midwives that night; that's how they met, but I guess they lost touch and didn't see each other again for years."

"And how did you feel about that?" John asked gently.

"I was happy for him. Carole's lovely, and we get along well. She has a son a few months older than me, so that was—different, but… It's been okay. Better than before, I guess."

"But she'll never be your mother, right?"

"Until I saw the road signs, I'd forgotten she even went to school here," Kurt admitted. "How did I forget that?"

John cocked his head to the side. "It's an easy detail to forget, given how young you were when she passed. You remember other things instead, I'm sure."

"I try not to." He blurted it out before he could even think about it, and at the terrible truth of his own words he felt utterly ashamed.

"Because every single time, it makes your breath come a little less easily," John said quietly.

"Hmm?"

"When the sadness comes back. Because it does, it always does, sooner or later. And each time it gets a little harder to stomach."

"Actually—yes, that's exactly what it's like. How…"

"Psychology professor, remember?"

Kurt let out a huff of grim laughter and returned his gaze back to the breeze-rippled surface of the water in the fountain, the wobbling outlines of pennies that had been tossed in there with wishes to ace a final or win the lottery.

"Kurt, if I might ask… How old are you now?"

"Twenty-two."

"Forgive me if I'm crossing a line, here, but… Don't you think that's an awfully long time to be carrying this pain around with you?"

"I don't know what else to do with it," Kurt whispered, wondering exactly why it was so easy to unburden himself to a perfect stranger and so ceaselessly difficult with someone he'd known almost since before he could remember.

"Well, a habit isn't a habit if it's not hard to break," John said succinctly. "But you _can_ break it, if you want to. You can have it in your back pocket without it dictating your life."

"I don't… It's turned me into someone I don't want to be," Kurt confessed, memories of how he'd spent his formative years—passing the time by breaking hearts—rushing to the surface. "But I don't know how to be any other way."

"Do you have a penny?"

Kurt met John's eyes with a quirked eyebrow, and at his impassive expression, decided to humor him. He reached into his pocket and drew out a quarter.

"Good, now stand up and face the water," John instructed him brightly, contradicting his earlier words by almost jumping to his feet, and Kurt wondered if the man had already known or been able to see something in him as he'd happened by. When Kurt was standing, John gestured out to the water. "Make a wish."

"Do I get twenty-five wishes?" Kurt asked jokingly, turning the quarter over and over.

"No. But you do get a chance to do something that I think you probably don't do all that often."

"Which is?"

"Put a little faith in something."

Kurt paused at that, struck by the man's insight. "Am I really that transparent?"

"More of a mirror, actually," John replied mildly, but there was a sadness in his tone that lent weight to his words. "Whenever you're ready."

"What do I wish for?" Kurt asked after a moment, and John shrugged.

"Whatever you want most for yourself."

Kurt looked out at the water, taking in the sprays from the three jets set along the center. He followed the white wall bordering the pool and then let his gaze slide up and away to the benches nestled in the shade of the crepe myrtle trees, their branches hanging heavily under the weight of their pink blossoms. He could almost picture his mother here, the incarnation of her that he'd never known—a dress and shorts, leggings and slouch socks and Keds—handing off a stack of thick psychology textbooks to his father and smiling, smiling, smiling.

_I wish to be what he needs me to be,_ Kurt thought, suddenly flashing on Blaine that night in Philadelphia, splayed out underneath him and waiting for a kiss that Kurt had been unable to give. Blaine needed all of the person he chose to love, and Kurt didn't know how to let someone have all of him when _no one_ had ever had all of him. With the hope that he could learn, he flipped the coin into the water, where it disappeared with a soft _plink._

"Now make it come true," John said. He glanced down at his watch and turned to face Kurt squarely. "I'm afraid I have a meeting in ten minutes, so I should be on my way."

Kurt nodded, once more wrapping his arms around himself but feeling that he didn't need to hold himself together quite so tightly. It was an alien sensation, and he didn't quite know how to process it.

"What made you stop and talk to me?" he asked.

John glanced at the fountain, squinting against the sunlight, and said almost cryptically, "Elizabeth wasn't the only person who shared this place with someone she once loved."

"Well… Thank you. For listening," Kurt said sincerely, hoping his sparse words would convey so much more.

"Of course. Take care of yourself, Kurt," John said, before adding, "She'd want you to."

As John walked away, Kurt took a last long look at the fountain and turned back the way he had come. His thoughts fell into quiet reminiscence, and he recalled trips in the car that had felt endless, sitting in the back seat and convincing himself that the car wasn't moving, that it was the buildings and trees that were chasing one another past the windows while Stevie Wonder played quietly in the front, his parents holding hands over the center console. As the trees and buildings moved slowly past him, he let himself wonder if they had been holding hands that night, if they had broken their grasp or held on more tightly when they'd begun to skid.

Crossing the street just past a small, brick-built Catholic chapel, Kurt saw Blaine standing under the shade of a tree at the entrance to the parking lot, his hand raised in a small wave.

Kurt smiled, and waved back.

When he reached the R.V. and pulled himself up through the open side door, soft music was playing and Blaine was dropping tea bags into two white mugs, the kettle switched on and the water bubbling. Kurt leaned against the door frame for a moment, watching and listening to the song's lyrics—_"today has been okay, today has been okay."_

"How was it?" Blaine asked, glancing over his shoulder.

"Strange, and… Okay," Kurt said, pushing himself upright and walking closer, fingertips trailing along the countertop.

"Sure?"

The kettle boiled, and as Blaine reached for it Kurt impulsively took his outstretched arm and pulled him into a tight hug, pressing his forehead to Blaine's temple. A moment or two passed before Blaine was reaching up to wind his fingers into the hair at the back of Kurt's head, and as he did so, Kurt pressed a fleeting kiss to his cheek.

It wasn't much, or even close to enough, not yet. But it was a start.

* * *

**Distance: 2,137 miles**


	16. Chrysalis (Georgia)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.

**IMPORTANT NOTE:** I have chosen to go spoiler-free this season, meaning that I know nothing about upcoming songs, storylines, plot points etc. If you could please refrain from posting any spoilers in your reviews, that would be great! Thank you :)

* * *

**Day 028: Sunday 14th October, 2012  
****Chrysalis (Georgia)****  
**

"_How are we supposed to choose? Rock paper scissors tournament?"_

"_Blaine, I think you're missing the fact that there's an Oscar-winning Sandra Bullock movie on this list."_

"_Huh. I guess you could say I was _blindsided._ …Stop rolling your eyes at me, come on."_

* * *

Every once in a while, there were times where Blaine acutely felt the blessing of having Kurt Hummel in his life. This, their second day in what he'd thought was going to be Savannah but had actually turned out to be Atlanta, was one of those times.

When they had left Columbia the previous day, Kurt turning out of the Sesquicentennial State Park with a bright smile the likes of which Blaine could barely ever remember him sporting, Blaine had retrieved the trip folder from the glove compartment to put their destination's zip code into the GPS. Kurt's arm had shot out and clamped the folder shut, dragging it across to his own lap. He hadn't been quick enough, however—Blaine had already seen the booking confirmation for Stone Mountain Park, Atlanta, GA.

"Atlanta?" he'd asked. "I thought we were headed for Savannah; it's right on the way to Florida."

"Ugh," Kurt had groaned, throwing up one of his hands and shoving the folder back at Blaine. "It was supposed to be a surprise since the dates worked out so well, but you might as well know."

Curiously, Blaine had reopened the folder, flipping straight to the GA divider, and his eyes went wide. "Kurt, are you serious?"

"You've never managed to make it to one before, so…"

"Oh my god, _marry me,"_ Blaine had breathed, so excited as he'd taken in the folder's colorful contents that he'd forgotten his words a second later.

And now here he was, still a little head-sore from Kiki by the Park the previous night, but loving every single second of this, his first-ever Pride event. They had been standing on Piedmont Avenue, across the street from The Flying Biscuit Café where they'd eaten a grotesquely large breakfast, for over three hours already. The thousands-strong crowd was cheering as Owl City's_Good Time_ blared over a P.A. system, the first of the floats slowly approaching from the other end of the street, crossing a road that was probably named Peachtree. He and Kurt were shoved up against each other, Blaine behind him and slightly to the right with one hand either side of him on the railings. It was almost a perfect mirror of that magical night in Rhode Island, the memory marred only by Blaine's near misstep, and Blaine was beginning to think that perhaps now, perhaps soon, it wouldn't be such a misstep after all.

"_This_ is what you've been missing out on all these years," Kurt told him, turning his head and his warm breath fanning across the shell of Blaine's ear. "Do you love it?"

"I love it," Blaine replied, and he couldn't help it: he wound his arm around Kurt's waist and rested his forehead on Kurt's shoulder. Kurt only tensed for a moment before relaxing entirely into the hold, leaning back against Blaine and threading their fingers together across his stomach. Blaine grinned into his shoulder, loving this newly affectionate side of his best friend—it was only a few days since Kurt had visited his mom's old college, but ever since that first hug in the kitchen, Kurt had seemed to be making an effort to just touch more. A glancing nudge to Blaine's thigh as Kurt got up to go to bed after their movie; a brief squeeze to his arm as they waited in line for breakfast at Café Strudel; a fleeting brush across his lower back as Kurt edged around him in the narrow walkway to take his turn in the bathroom.

Aside from it driving Blaine slowly and quietly crazy with desire, that softly tingling buzz in his bloodstream, it simply made him feel… Special. Worthy.

The crowd went wild as Atlanta's police and fire departments proceeded gradually by, red and blue lights flashing, and as Blaine followed them with his eyes, he caught the gaze of the tall blond standing next to him, rainbow stripes painted down his neck and arm. The guy gestured to Kurt—who was looking the other way, craning his neck to see the floats coming down the street—and gave Blaine a thumbs-up and a wink, and Blaine couldn't help but grin even harder.

"Today is perfect," he said into Kurt's ear, resisting the urge to nuzzle into his neck.

"I knew you'd love it," Kurt replied, and save for the occasional whoop or cheer as each float went past, they were enveloped in the comfortable quiet that they'd always been able to fall into together.

The parade was an hour-long riot of color, sound, light, and laughter that held Blaine's rapt attention as he took in floats for Bubbles Salon, Chi Chi LaRue, and the Swinging Richards. He watched in awe at the sheer number of families marching under the banner of PFLAG, proclaiming their love for their gay, lesbian, and transgendered children and relatives, along with the huge and bright turn-out from Atlanta's Gay-Straight Alliance. The longer the parade went on, the more Blaine felt drunk on the very air surrounding them, filled with love and acceptance for everything that they all were. It was one of the headiest feelings he'd experienced in a long time.

As the parade began to draw to a close, the music faded into The xx's _Intro_ and a strange hush seemed to fall over the crowds further up the street. Still holding on to Kurt, he turned them both sideways to get a better look.

"It's Angel Action, like they did for Matthew Shepard in Laramie," Kurt said, and that was when Blaine realized what he was looking at: a procession of angels, everyone dressed in flowing white robes and holding boards with the names and faces of teenagers who had committed suicide after being victimized and horrifically bullied for their sexuality.

All at once, the sadness and melancholy settling over him like a well-worn jacket, Blaine's giddiness faded. Finding it hard to look at the faces as they passed by, he once again dropped his forehead to rest on Kurt's shoulder, his grasp around Kurt's waist tightening and pulling him closer.

After a moment, Kurt turned to face him. "I know what you're thinking about," he murmured, his hand a gentle pressure lifting Blaine's chin to meet his eyes. "Don't."

"I should have been there. If we hadn't had that stupid fight—"

"Blaine, it was a couple of bruises. Nothing I couldn't handle," Kurt said reassuringly, but when Blaine closed his eyes, he could still see the purple rage blossomed across the freckled skin of Kurt's cheek and jaw, the steel in Kurt's eyes as he looked at the contents of his McQueen messenger bag strewn across the dirty floor of their high school changing rooms. "Besides, you came back for me."

"It still shouldn't have happened," Blaine muttered, shaking his head and casting his gaze down at the frayed edges of his favorite pair of Sperrys.

"Need I remind you that it got him expelled? At the very least maybe he would've thought twice before doing it to somebody else," Kurt said. "Will you please look at me?"

Blaine did, and after a pregnant pause, Kurt grinned and shook him by the shoulders until Blaine was smiling too.

"I was _lucky_ to have you, Blaine Anderson," he said. "Look at all these poor kids that didn't have someone like you; a best friend who wanted to fight their battles for them."

"You're right," Blaine agreed, something tightening in the pit of his stomach even as he did so. There was that word again: friend. "I was lucky to have you, too."

"I know you were," Kurt quipped, and turned back around to watch the end of the parade.

Blaine breathed slowly, trying to rid himself of the sense of deflation taking him over. They really had been amongst the lucky ones, and it was only at the beginning of the parade that Blaine had been feeling extra thankful to be able to call Kurt his best friend. Was he really willing to put all of it at risk? The thing was, what Kurt had said into the rain of Rehoboth Beach had been right. That night in Philadelphia, Blaine hadn't been anywhere near as drunk as Kurt, and he remembered every second of what had happened between them. The memory was burned more brightly into his mind than any other memory he had of Kurt—how could he simply be expected to forget it?

Blaine wanted more; he'd had one taste and it wasn't nearly enough. But for now, watching the passing faces of the teenagers who had felt like they'd had no one at all, the ball remained firmly in Kurt's court. It was why, when Blaine got into bed that night and Kurt slid the warm pillow he'd been leaning against over to Blaine's side of the bed, Blaine wouldn't crowd Kurt's body with his own and pepper kisses over the skin of his bare shoulder.

It was why, when Blaine felt Kurt pulling away from him to wave at the final group in the parade—the scantily-clad men in black booty shorts and thigh-high boots, bearing angel wings and signs offering free hugs—he simply loosened his grip and let Kurt slip from his arms.

"Hey, over here!" Kurt called out, and one of the angels sauntered over. His light brown hair was styled up and away from his face, focusing all of the attention on his piercing green eyes and the sweep of rainbow colors accenting his prominent cheekbones. Inclining his head towards Blaine, Kurt told the angel, "My friend here could use a hug."

"Is that right? Aren't you enjoying the parade, sweetheart?" the angel asked, raking his gaze down Blaine's body, and Blaine held his hands up, heat filling his cheeks.

"I'm—No, I'm having a fantastic time, I don't need a free hug—"

"How about a free kiss instead?"

Before Blaine knew what was happening, there were broad, sun-warmed hands cupping the sides of his neck and soft lips alighting upon his own. And for a handful of moments, he let himself get lost in the feel of the angel's mouth, lips gently working his own open with increasing pressure until Blaine was kissing him back and almost moaning into the sensation, _finally, finally,_ and he could taste cinnamon gum—but Kurt hated cinnamon gum, this wasn't right, what was—

Blaine heard Kurt clearing his throat, and in a blink, the kiss was over. As he pulled away, the angel pressed a condom into Blaine's slack hand—and if that wasn't just the tackiest thing ever, he didn't know what was—and with a suave grin, murmured, "Find me later, killer."

"Oh my god," Blaine breathed as the angel turned away to rejoin the parade.

"Come on, Blaine, he can't have been _that_ good," Kurt scoffed, and Blaine almost stepped back as he saw that same steel in his eyes. Kurt crossed his arms over his chest as he watched the crowd of angels continue down the street, the almost sheer fabric of his white tee stretching over his upper arms, and Blaine swallowed.

"No, I mean—" Blaine cut off, and dropped his voice. "He told me to find him later. I need a disguise!"

"So you don't—" Kurt stopped, dropping his gaze. Blaine watched as a small smile quirked the corners of his mouth for a passing moment, before Kurt cleared his expression and looked back up. "I think you'd make a very fetching Batman. They probably have face-painting inside the park, actually."

With the end of the parade, the crowd was filtering into the street to march behind them towards Piedmont Park for the rest of the day's Pride events. On a whim, Blaine grabbed Kurt's hand and linked their fingers together, and it felt like the Brooklyn Bridge all over again. "You know, if you want to go full Bowie, I won't stand in your way. I know you have an addiction, but it's really kind of adorable."

Kurt silently swung their joined hands between them and circled Blaine's palm with his thumb, another one of those new little things of his where Blaine felt like he'd been thrown a curve ball and didn't quite know how to act, other than to smile at him for just a little too long and with a little too much hope. While he might push, nudge, edge them a little closer to _perhaps soon,_ he wouldn't be the first to break their stalemate. He couldn't, no matter how much he might want to make an unholy mess of everything they had built together, just so that he could _know,_ one way or another.

All he could do was be ready for the next curve ball. He just didn't know what it would be.

* * *

**Distance: 2,356 miles**


	17. Kiss, Consume (Florida)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.  
**Notes:** I have chosen to go spoiler-free this season, meaning that I know nothing about upcoming songs, storylines, plot points etc. If you could please refrain from posting any spoilers in your reviews, that would be great! Thank you :) Also, I'd highly recommend listening to the songs featured in this chapter when they appear—you can find them at **100daysmusic dot tumblr dot com**.

* * *

**Day 031/032: Wednesday 17****th****/Thursday 18****th**** October, 2012  
****Kiss/Consume (Florida)****  
**

"_Kurt, no. I hate _My Girl."

"_What? No, you don't. You cry every single time she runs in and starts telling them to put on his glasses. Besides, you've had three vetoes already."_

"…_Three vetoes is a stupid rule."_

* * *

"Ugh. Is there no such thing as 'behind closed doors' anymore?"

"What?"

"Come look at this."

From his vantage point in the R.V.'s open doorway, hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea, Kurt watched the couple making their way back from the beach. The girl's shoes hung from her fingertips as her long turquoise skirt billowed around her, the lower third of it either tie-dyed or soaked with seawater, Kurt couldn't tell. The guy with her—clearly her boyfriend, or perhaps a lover in a torrid affair, which Kurt would have found infinitely more interesting—kept stopping every few paces to bury his hands in her shoulder-length blonde locks and kiss her as if nobody were watching.

There probably _wasn't_ anybody else watching, aside from Kurt. And Blaine, of course, when Kurt felt the gentle press of Blaine's chest against his shoulder blades; not close enough, but not far enough, either.

"You don't think they're kind of cute?" Blaine asked.

"I think I'm surprised that they're not bursting into flames, being out in broad daylight and all," Kurt said with a sniff, and took a sip of his tea.

"So you're telling me that if someone kissed you like that, you'd really give a shit where it happened," Blaine challenged him, moving to lean against the door frame and look at Kurt pointedly, arms crossed over his chest.

"I can safely say that if someone kissed me like they were trying to eat my face, I'd be thoroughly repulsed and make for the nearest exit," Kurt replied blithely, trying to make his tone as nonchalant as possible. The all-day sunshine and humidity had done little good for Blaine's wild curls since their arrival in St. Augustine the previous day, but they had done wonders for his temperament, and currently he was in the mood for teasing. Kurt could almost hear the rest of the conversation unfolding before they'd even had it.

"I think you're jealous," Blaine said, poking Kurt in the arm. "The heat's getting to you."

"It's not the heat at all. It's that we had to stop at yet _another_ Walmart, this time one with homeless people living inside, and it's also that I'm a great kisser, and watching _that_ makes me want to throw up," Kurt retorted, the words tumbling from between his lips before he could even consider them and oh, _how_ did Blaine always manage to get under his skin like that?

"A _great_ kisser, huh?" Blaine drawled, and Kurt could have kicked himself. The trap was set.

"Yup. I've had feedback," he quipped, taking another sip of his tea and glancing back out of the doorway.

"Show me."

"What?!" Kurt spluttered. He wiped a few stray drops of tea from his chin as he regarded Blaine with an incredulous look. "You can't be serious."

"Oh, I'm very serious," Blaine countered, standing up straight and dropping his arms to his sides. "Lay one on me."

"If I remember correctly, you've already had one 'laid on you' in the past few days," Kurt said hotly, turning on his heel and taking his tea to the sink. He lifted the cover and unceremoniously dumped it out, suddenly not even remotely thirsty. He rinsed his mug quickly, noting Blaine's silence but choosing not to comment further; it was already a low blow to bring _that_ kiss up, since Blaine had neither instigated it nor professed to enjoy it, but it had been playing on Kurt's mind enough since Sunday.

Specifically, the way Blaine's eyes had fluttered closed after a second, the twitch in his hand like he'd wanted to reach up and pull the angel closer, and—what had stung the most, a razor-sharp and jagged cluster at the base of Kurt's throat—how the muscles in his jaw had clenched and tightened when, just for a moment or two, Blaine had kissed the angel back.

He'd been running hot and cold ever since, flirting shamelessly and then keeping his distance so subtly that Kurt couldn't have called him out even if he'd wanted to. It was damnably frustrating, and a great part of the reason for Kurt's sour mood.

"Kurt."

_Deep breath, Kurt._ "What?" he asked calmly, back still to Blaine.

"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable," Blaine said.

"You didn't," Kurt said as breezily as he could, turning and bracing himself on the counter behind him. "I think I might go for a walk, though. Seems a shame to waste such a beautiful night."

"Even with the humidity?" Blaine asked with a nod to Kurt's upswept hair, which had begun to droop despite regular re-applications of hairspray.

"Ah, it's done for anyway," Kurt lamented, and gathered the soft blanket draped across the chair behind the cab. Blaine was still standing in the open doorway, hands behind his back, and Kurt smirked as he approached him. Wanting to mess with him, just a little, he crowded into Blaine's personal space, parting his lips just so and letting his gaze linger on Blaine's mouth the perfect fraction too long. "I won't be long. Movie when I get back?"

Blaine's lips pursed in a reluctant smile, and Kurt was already on the second step down when he heard Blaine murmur, "Okay."

As he made his way down the beach, his bare toes digging into the fine sand, he took a deep lungful of fresh ocean air. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, and the spill of colors in the sky was fading into a deep cornflower blue, Venus rising in the west. Despite the humidity, it was the second beautiful night he'd had in a row, and he walked to a place where the R.V. was well out of sight, until on his little stretch of shore, he was alone.

After spreading out the blanket and sitting down, he pulled his phone from his pocket and turned it over and over in his hands. He needed to talk to someone, try and work his way through everything before it all overwhelmed him. But judging by the time, April was about to go on stage somewhere in Brooklyn, Finn was already at work for his night shift, and being a Wednesday, his dad and Carole would be at Carole's sister's house for dinner.

The only other person he could think of was Blaine, and therein laid the problem. His thumb swiped back and forth, back and forth across the screen, clearing it of app icons and then restoring them, until he caught sight of the icon for his blog app. He paused only for a moment before tapping on it and going straight to the video capture option.

Squinting into the harsh glare of the flashlight as he turned his phone around—god, this would look like some dreadful _Blair Witch_ parody—he gave the camera a little wave.

"Sorry I haven't updated for a while," he said. "It's a little difficult to find alone time when you're on the road with your best friend almost twenty-four-seven. Looks like there's a few more of you than my last update, so hello and welcome.

"Um… Well, we're in St. Augustine, Florida, and heading down to Key West tomorrow. We had a four-hundred-mile drive in from Atlanta on Monday, which was exhausting. Today we checked out some of the local tourist stuff and stopped for lunch in this old hotel that has a café in what used to be the deep end of the pool, and then we ended up back here, where we've mostly been enjoying the beach and catching up on our workout routines and emails and calls home."

Kurt paused, recalling his conversations with Andrew and John and how easy it had been to open up to them as strangers; he reminded himself that his modest number of followers were all exactly that—and how many of them were likely to watch his silly piece-to-camera videos, anyway?

"Blaine's been acting… Strange. More than usual, I mean. Something happened at Pride in Atlanta. One of the, uh… One of the Free Hugs Angels kissed him, and for a second he looked like he was really into it, which—it hurt. And I wish it didn't.

"The thing is, like I keep telling you guys, we've been best friends for so long that… I don't want to risk everything we have, but right now I'm at the point where every time I look at him I want to kiss him, and it should be weird, right? It should be weird to think about him that way; it used to be!

"I don't know what to do," Kurt said miserably. Finding himself with no other words, he turned the phone back around and hit Upload, blinking as the impression of the flashlight seared behind his eyes eluded him and faded.

"I don't know what to do," he repeated, to no one but himself.

* * *

"Have you ever noticed how phallic Florida is?" Blaine asked the next day, glancing at the map of Florida Kurt had printed off and stuffed into the folder along with their campground booking.

"Is that all you ever think about?" Kurt asked irritably. They'd been on the road for the entire day contending with freeway traffic and passive-aggressive drivers, it was nearing sunset, and he'd almost reached the limit of his patience—not to mention the fact that the lyrics of the song Blaine had skipped to on Kurt's 'Sunny Skies' playlist—The Colourist's _Wishing Wells—_were dangerously close to the bone.

"_Just follow what you feel, just follow what you feel,"_ was a message Kurt wasn't particularly enamored of, given that he really had no idea how to begin deciphering the mess of what he was feeling.

"Look at it," Blaine said, waving the map in front of the steering wheel. "No wonder they call it America's Wang. Anyway, you're one to talk."

"As I was _saying,"_ Kurt intoned deliberately, reaching up to adjust his sunglasses, "everything happens for a reason."

"Come on, Kurt. You don't believe in any of that."

"No, you're misunderstanding me," Kurt said, frustrated. Why did they always seem to be on two separate pages these days? "You _know_ I don't believe in any of the spiritual stuff, but I do believe that everything that happens does so for a reason. History, simple as that. Z wouldn't have happened without Y, which wouldn't have happened without X, back and back. Look at _My Girl,_ for instance. Thomas Jay wouldn't have gone back for Vada's mood ring if she hadn't dropped it, she wouldn't have dropped it if they hadn't been kicking around that beehive, and so on."

"So what you're really saying is that there isn't actually any such thing as history," Blaine said thoughtfully, and Kurt nodded with a smile.

"Right. Because one way or another, history is always present."

"You know a little something of the world, don't you?"

"Not really. I just know a little something of mine."

They lapsed back into silence as Kurt concentrated on navigating them through the narrower streets and inside the campground, and after parking and checking in, they both jumped down from the cab with sighs of relief, stretching out their cramped joints and muscles.

When they turned off Duval Street and onto South, Blaine took Kurt's hand and linked their fingers together, and Kurt's pulse skittered.

He knew he'd been subdued since the previous night, lost inside his own indecision and wondering what to do next. He'd made peace with the fact that he wanted more—so much more—of Blaine than what he was getting, and what he'd taken in Philadelphia. What was really getting to him was the fact that although he had recollections of what Blaine felt like, the weight and measure of him, he knew nothing of the taste of Blaine's lips, or the pressure and temperature of his mouth.

He also knew that Blaine had taken note of his shifting mood—it was clear in that same languid tension Kurt had been noticing increasingly frequently since Rhode Island. Perhaps even longer ago, were he to trace it back. No Z without Y, no Y without X, no X without—

"Wow," Blaine said, interrupting Kurt's thoughts.

Standing before them was the tall concrete buoy declaring the ground beneath their feet as the southernmost point in the continental U.S., and Key West as 'Home of the Sunset.' Behind it, the sky was appropriately smeared with pink and orange and yellow, the sun lazily descending in a halo of palest blue.

"Take a picture!" Blaine exclaimed with all the excitement of a child, and he grinned off to the side of the buoy, bracing himself against it with one hand, his left foot crossed over his right. After Kurt had captured Blaine's brilliant grin and forwarded the picture to Blaine's mom, he noticed a new email in his notifications and tapped it open.

It was an anonymous comment on his video post, and the only text was a YouTube link, signed with the initial F. He tapped the link absentmindedly, eyes lingering on Blaine as he snapped pictures of the marker, the sunset, and the weathered plaque on the low wall that separated the ground from the ocean below.

When the song began, blaring from his phone at top volume, Kurt almost jumped out of his skin. He circled around behind the buoy and let it cast him in shadow to listen in private and regain his breath. He'd been meaning to disable anonymous comments entirely; he'd received a few on his blog before, but they'd been spam, links to diet pills and discount codes and cure-alls for erectile dysfunction. They hadn't been anything like this: a simple link to a song he knew and adored. Second only to film, music was his great love—and this song… This song was perfect.

Because anything really _could_ happen, couldn't it? What if what had happened between them in Philadelphia wasn't a total mistake, simply the prelude to Kurt finally giving in to what his instincts had been telling him for weeks, now? _What if, what if, what if…_

"What are you doing? Come see this!" Blaine called, and Kurt took a deep breath.

He stepped out of the shadows and moved to Blaine's left so that Blaine was silhouetted against the fading sun, light casting the top layer of his curls auburn. He stretched his arms up over his head, letting out the sigh of a man satisfied and content. Kurt felt as if he were watching Blaine through a long overdue pair of brand new eyes; he knew there was rescue in those arms, and suddenly he wanted to smudge himself into them until he felt safe.

"_Yeah, since we found out, since we found out that anything could happen…"_

Blaine turned away from the vista of the sky and pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head to look down at Kurt, his smile beatific and his eyes sparkling with warmth and light. As he leaned forward and held out his hand, he looked… Beautiful.

Kurt took Blaine's hand and stepped up onto the wall, the repetitive build of the lyrics wrapping him up in recklessness and resolve, because this was it, wasn't it? This was the real movie moment where the rest of them paled in comparison. Providence had been a premature disappointment; the Brooklyn Bridge belonged to two people that didn't exist; Philadelphia had been a rushed and disastrous taste, nothing more.

The simple fact was that Kurt didn't want to leave any more missed opportunities in his wake. He wanted Blaine. Every single moment they'd come close, every near miss, every mistake Kurt had chosen not to make had been leading to this, hadn't it? No Z without Y.

"_Anything could happen, anything could—"_

The music exploded and so did Kurt, his stomach caught in his chest as he hooked three fingers into the collar of Blaine's t-shirt and crushed their lips together in a kiss that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

It only took a moment before Blaine was kissing back, inhaling sharply through his nose as he pressed forward, his hands flying up to frame Kurt's face. It was pressure and give in perfect balance, exactly what Kurt had been wanting but not letting himself have, because this was the first brick from the wall of their friendship, the others tumbling beneath it, and as Blaine's lips parted, they tumbled down on top of Kurt, and he pulled back.

"Fuck," he whispered, looking away as Blaine's eyes opened. "I'm s—"

"Don't you dare," Blaine ordered, carding his fingers into the hair at the back of Kurt's head and yanking him down into a messy, hungry kiss that burned him in its intensity, teeth catching his bottom lip. And at once Kurt felt it as if it were something physical: a click, a slot back into place, a page turning so that they were both back on the same one. One hand still holding onto his phone as the song continued to play, he scrambled for purchase with the other, looping his arm around Blaine's neck and pulling him flush.

When Blaine broke the kiss, he simply said, "R.V. Now," and took Kurt by the hand, pulling him down from the wall and back onto the street.

His heart pounded in his chest as they ran hand in hand back to the R.V., Kurt barely keeping pace as Blaine led him there. Two kisses and he suddenly felt like he was standing on the edge of the world, the ground beneath his feet tipping, tipping, tipping him over the edge into a giddy sense of oblivion, and with the drama of the moment broken as he finally remembered himself and shut off the song, he grinned up at the sky.

No sooner was the door to the R.V. closed behind them than Blaine's mouth was back on his, his tongue tracing the line of Kurt's lips before plunging inside. They stumbled sideways up the steps, the inside of the R.V. growing darker in the fading daylight. As they finally managed to make it to the bedroom, still locked at the mouth, Blaine pushed him up against the bathroom door, linking their fingers and pressing them into the wood either side of Kurt's head.

"So this is happening now," he said, his voice holding a note of desire that Kurt had never heard before. He shivered as he breathed heavily, Blaine's face mere inches from his own and his eyes obsidian. "No going back?"

"No going back," Kurt said, pushing his hips forward into Blaine's and whining in the back of his throat, repeating to himself over and over and over, _it's just a sex thing._

"Fuck, okay," Blaine whispered, pressing himself even more tightly against Kurt for a second, both of them moaning at the contact and friction, before pulling him into the bedroom and flicking on the light. Kurt pushed Blaine back onto the bed and looked at him for a moment, took in the sun-blush left on his skin and the rumpled front of his shirt where he'd had it gripped in his fist.

The impatient fire died but the wanton heat remained, and with his eyes locked on Blaine's, he slowly followed, knees either side of Blaine's hips on top of the covers. He leant forward, tracing Blaine's bottom lip with his index finger and biting back a groan when Blaine sucked it into his mouth; exactly what Kurt had wanted him to do that overtired, hazy night in Vermont.

_Have we always been waiting for this?_

Kurt replaced his finger with his lips, cupping Blaine's jaw to feel the shift and clench he'd been picturing since Atlanta. It was slow, the sounds Blaine made in the back of his throat hitting Kurt like pinpricks as he kissed Blaine harder, savoring the taste while Blaine's hands gripped and squeezed at his sides, moving up and underneath his shirt. He gasped into Blaine's mouth at the touch, firm and strong.

"God, why haven't we always been doing this?" he whined, rolling his hips down onto Blaine's and pressing their foreheads together, their breath mingling between them. Blaine groaned low in response, tugging Kurt's shirt up over his head and tossing it before letting his fingers drift over Kurt's nipples and down over his ribcage.

Kurt shivered and surged forward to recapture Blaine's lips, and he'd never kissed _anyone_ like this. Everyone he'd ever been with had been a rush, even his first, and he felt like he was learning all over again, sweet tremors chasing one another up and down his spine and tingling, all the way up into his lips as Blaine kissed a new life into him.

They undressed one another in increments, trading off until there was nothing left of them but skin and flesh and Kurt's hips working circles into Blaine's. Blaine fell backwards, taking Kurt with him. His fingers gripped the back of Kurt's neck like a lifeline, and every time his screwed-shut eyes opened, they stared straight into Kurt.

"Blaine—shit," Kurt managed, feeling the sensation begin to build in his fingers and toes.

"Come on, Kurt," Blaine said, his pace quickening and his cock dragging against Kurt's, palms kneading into the flesh of Kurt's ass as he bared his throat and his back arched off the covers.

"Are you—you close?"

"Fuck—yes, just don't… Jesus, don't stop, I've—I've wanted this…"

"Tell me," Kurt panted into the hollow of Blaine's neck, sweat beading at his temples, and he spread his knees wider, thrust down harder, chasing and chasing and chasing.

"Couldn't—ah—get Philadelphia off my mind, you… The way you looked, fuck, I—_Kurt…"_

Blaine's entire body tensed as he came, a soundless cry in his slack mouth, and Kurt bit down hard onto his collarbone as he wound up and up and up, coiling tightly and then unspooling like thread.

The comedown was calm like Kurt had never felt, Blaine's hands finding Kurt's face to pull him closer, their lazy lips fitting together and sliding apart. Kurt climbed off him carefully, collapsing onto his side and pushing his face into the pillow, blood rushing through his head in a buzz that dulled everything.

He looked at Blaine, and found him smiling.

"Tell me something," Blaine panted, his chest—gloriously, gloriously bare and oh, Kurt was going to take his time mapping out every last dip and contour—rapidly rising and falling as he tried to catch his breath. Kurt gazed at him through heavy eyes and turned fully onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow and looking at Blaine expectantly. "This _was_ just about the sex, right? There isn't something more you want to tell me?"

_Of course there's something more, you idiot,_ Kurt wanted to say, but the three seconds he hesitated let that old fear back in, and it was just enough to slot a couple of bricks back into place, the light higher and out of reach.

Heart hammering in his chest, he met Blaine's eyes squarely and forced out the words, "No. What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip."

* * *

**Distance: 3,230 miles**


	18. Treading Water (Alabama)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.  
**Notes:** I have chosen to go spoiler-free this season, meaning that I know nothing about upcoming songs, storylines, plot points etc. If you could please refrain from posting any spoilers in your reviews, that would be great! Thank you :)

* * *

**Day 033: Friday 19****th**** October, 2012  
****Treading Water (Alabama)****  
**

"_So we've got it narrowed down to _Big Fish,_ a low-budget post-apocalyptic movie, and _Borat?"

"_Yup. Not gonna lie; I think your Tim Burton addiction is going to be getting a healthy injection in Alabama."_

"_Well, it's supposed to be really good. And your 'future husband' is in it, after all…"_

* * *

Blaine's first time had been a mistake.

The guy's name was Tyler Pace—one of Blaine's roommates in London, an intern on the same program, and originally from Cork, Ireland. His uniform was t-shirts in muted colors underneath a boxy black blazer, and ratty jeans that would have appalled Kurt. He had small black gauges in his ears and wore his bright red hair shot through with blond, shaved at the sides and in a messy approximation of a James Dean-esque quiff on top. Obscuring his pale gray eyes were a pair of thick, oversized black glasses with red arms, and there was always a pair of Skullcandy headphones around his neck blaring U2 and Stiff Little Fingers.

Tyler appeared, at first, to be a patchwork of personalities all clamoring for dominion over one body, and that was one of the things that Blaine had been immediately drawn to. Tyler had been an enigma, keeping mostly to himself and only ever speaking when spoken to or when he had something particularly important to say. All of Blaine's questions had gone unasked, and he had contented himself with mostly being in the dark, even if Tyler's eyes had sometimes lingered on him as if waiting for him to say something.

Blaine had scoffed every time Lucy told him that Tyler had a crush on him.

The night they slept together, a few days before the beginning of their Christmas break, Tyler had knocked on Blaine's bedroom door mere moments after Blaine had just disconnected from a blazing fight with Kurt over Skype. The walls in the flat were old and thin, and everyone had probably heard Blaine's placatory tone escalating into angered yelling, louder and louder until he'd eventually told Kurt that if he was going to be like that, then he was glad he wasn't coming home for the holidays, before hanging up and dropping his head into his hands.

"Everything alright there?" Tyler had asked quietly, in his softly lilting Irish accent, when Blaine opened the door. Perhaps it was the concern in his voice; perhaps it was the way his eyes kept dropping seemingly involuntarily to Blaine's mouth, or perhaps it was the fact that he was Kurt's polar opposite—Blaine still didn't know what had possessed him—but whatever the reason, Blaine had stepped forward and kissed him.

One thing had led to another, and even though Tyler was sweet about it afterward, something irrevocably changed between them. Blaine suddenly noticed the absence of lingering looks that had never even seemed to registered before. Tyler started talking to him more, but never about anything real. For the first time, Blaine had realized that the mystery surrounding Tyler had been nothing but the unresolved sexual tension between them.

The second time it happened, Blaine had been drunk and in pieces over the news of his grandfather's death, and on Tyler's part it was probably no more than a pity fuck. That was what it had felt like: quick, messy, and a race to the finish.

With Kurt, it had lasted hours. They had traded a litany of deep kisses that spanned their movements under the covers until they were both spent, and Blaine had fallen asleep with Kurt's face buried in the hollow of his neck.

The next evening, when Kurt finally pulled up to the campground's dump station in Ozark, Alabama—a town Blaine had never heard of before—the sun had long since set. They had been on the road from Key West all day, driving in two shifts and stopping only for an hour in Gainesville. They were both exhausted, not only from the miles they had covered, but from their shared lack of sleep the night before.

Silence enveloped them as Kurt switched off the engine, stretching his arms up over his head and rolling his wrists, and Blaine had to remind himself that he actually had permission to look now. So he did, taking in the lean lines of Kurt's body and picturing the miles of lightly freckled pale skin that he knew lay beneath his shirt and jeans.

If it weren't for the exhaustion, Blaine might have done a victory dance or something equally as embarrassing.

"What are you looking at?" Kurt asked around a yawn that he stifled behind his hand. Everything about him screamed tiredness, and Blaine reached over to let the backs of his fingers drift over Kurt's cheek.

"You, sleepy-head," he said, smiling fondly when Kurt leaned into the touch. "Do you think you'll stay awake long enough for us to watch our movie?"

"I'll be fine once I've had coffee… And stretched. God, I _ache,"_ Kurt complained, turning sideways in his seat and dropping his cheek to the headrest.

"Go stretch," Blaine said, unclipping his seat belt and standing up. "My turn to empty the tanks. Don't be too jealous."

Kurt wrinkled his nose.

"Aren't you jealous at _all?"_ Blaine asked. "The hoses, and watching the gauges, and the disposable gloves… I'd be jealous."

"If I had the energy, I would be side-eying you so hard right now," Kurt murmured, his eyes drifting heavily closed.

"Hey, come on. Up," Blaine said, taking Kurt's hands and pulling him to his feet. He swayed for a second before finding his equilibrium, and offered Blaine a weak but grateful smile. Quite unable to resist the impulse, Blaine rocked forward and caught Kurt's sleepy, slackening mouth in a fleeting kiss; both a request for and promise of more. He knew he was playing a dangerous game, particularly in light of what Kurt had said the night before, but he couldn't yet find it within himself to care. What lay between them had a time limit on it, now—an expiration, dated the day they would arrive back in Maine—and Blaine was going to take whatever he was given.

Leaving Kurt and his soft smile, Blaine grabbed his iPod from its dashboard dock and headed outside, donning a pair of disposable gloves as he went. Soundtracked by a loop of Coldplay's _Clocks_ and its unforgettable piano riff—the one he had learned by heart in tenth grade and played so often that, one Sunday morning after a sleepover, Kurt had told him he'd been drumming it on top of the blankets in his sleep—he set about emptying the tanks. First the black water, then the gray, running water rinses in between and finishing the job by dumping a liberal amount of treatment into each.

"If there was even the slightest spill," Kurt said when Blaine was back inside and leaning against the frame of the open bedroom door, "you're sleeping on the couch."

Blaine grinned, docking the iPod by the bed with the song still softly playing. Kurt was stretched out on his stomach, still in his clothes and half of his face pushed into the pillow. He regarded Blaine through one bleary eye.

"Coffee?" Blaine offered.

"Mm… No. Too comfy."

"Massage?"

"Oh my god. _Please."_

Chuckling, Blaine climbed onto the bed and straddled Kurt's thighs, blinking and swallowing as he gently tugged Kurt's shirt from the waistband of his jeans. With a little maneuvering, he managed to relieve Kurt of every last stitch of clothing from the upper half of his body.

Skin, miles of it, and he was allowed to look and touch and savor every inch.

He rubbed his hands together to warm them up, and started with Kurt's shoulders. Kurt melted beneath his ministrations almost immediately, letting out a loud and positively obscene groan of pleasure.

"Oh my _god,_ that feels _amazing,"_ Kurt sighed as Blaine gently began working out a knot at the top of his shoulder blade. "If I'd known you were so good with your hands, I might not have taken so long."

"Why _did_ you take so long?" Blaine asked after a moment, careful to keep his tone light and conversational.

Kurt paused, then said simply, "It was totally weird. And then suddenly, it wasn't."

"Obviously I just became too hard to resist," Blaine said, taking Kurt's arms and gently pushing them up so that he could wrap them around his pillow.

"Hard was right," Kurt replied wryly, arching his hips off the bed in a quick snap that sent a jolt through Blaine. Shaking it off, he redoubled his concentration. He dragged the heel of his hand up the length of Kurt's spine, a light flush of red left in its wake as blood rushed to the surface of the skin, and then worked both thumbs in circles between Kurt's shoulder blades. "Anyway, you—oh, _right_ there—you took your time as well."

"What do you mean?"

"Rhode Island? The Brooklyn Bridge?" Kurt reminded him. "Come on, B."

The nickname fell from between Kurt's lips so easily that it was as if it hadn't been years since he'd used it, and Blaine felt a rush of nostalgic fondness in his chest. He eased off on the pressure for a moment, letting his fingers drift back and forth across the breadth of Kurt's shoulders.

"And what about Delaware?" he asked carefully, knowing that he probably wasn't going to get any answers, not with such a wall already between them. It was translucent—almost invisible, really—but tangible, and daubed with the words, 'boundary line, please do not cross.'

"Can we just… Forget Delaware?"

"Sure," Blaine said, even though he knew it would take a long time to forget the fear in Kurt's eyes that day; a storm reflecting the rain pounding down around them. Changing tact, he leaned forward and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to Kurt's shoulder. Against his skin, he murmured, "Something else I'm curious about, though."

"Oh?"

"What number am I?"

A beat, a shift, and then, "Thirteen."

"Lucky thirteen," Blaine said with a chuckle. He sat back and pressed his thumbs into the base of Kurt's neck. "It was what, four before I left? Wow. I really _was_ cramping your style."

"No, you—mmm, that's good… It wasn't ever like that, not really," Kurt said quietly. "You were enough."

Blaine breathed in slowly, leaning his weight onto his thumbs and working out the knots in Kurt's muscles. Kurt shuddered underneath him when the tension finally dissipated, and this time when Blaine leaned forward, Kurt twisted and hooked his arm around Blaine's neck, dragging him down to lie next to him.

"Better?" Blaine asked. Kurt nodded, turning fully onto his side and looking remarkably more awake than before. "Good."

"Was last night a one-time thing?" Kurt asked suddenly, and Blaine blinked dumbly at him for a moment.

Carefully, he asked, "Do you want it to be?"

"No," Kurt said. "Do you?"

"Not when you were the least terrifying you've ever looked this morning. No fire, pitchforks _or_ death."

"Be serious."

"No, Kurt," Blaine said as reassuringly as he could, curving his palm into the dip of Kurt's waist. "I don't want it to be a one-time thing."

With a flash of a wicked smirk, Kurt pulled himself on top of Blaine, hands either side of his head on the pillow. Looking at him with a glint of mischief in his eyes, he leaned down to murmur against Blaine's lips, "So what do you propose we do about that?"

Blaine surged upward to drag Kurt into a deep kiss, shivering as Kurt cupped his jaw and let out a breathy little hum. Without pulling away, he blindly reached out to switch off the song he still had playing on a loop—he didn't want to hear about confusion or ticking clocks or missed opportunities.

He just wanted Kurt.

* * *

**Distance: 3,996 miles**

* * *

For further reading, head on over to **100daysofblaine dot tumblr dot com** or **100daysofkurt dot tumblr dot com**. As always, you can listen to the music featured in each chapter at **100daysmusic dot tumblr dot com**. Thank you all for reading and reviewing!


	19. In Flux (Mississippi)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.  
**Notes:** I have chosen to go spoiler-free this season, meaning that I know nothing about upcoming songs, storylines, plot points etc. If you could please refrain from posting any spoilers in your reviews, that would be great! Thank you :)

* * *

**Day 035: Sunday 21****st**** October, 2012  
****In Flux (Mississippi)****  
**

"_All I'm saying is that we need more horror films on this list."_

"_Kurt, please just—look, I know. I know we do, but you know how much Tobin Bell freaks me out..."_

"_Alright, alright. How about _The Ladykillers?"

* * *

"…_out in North Carolina and then there's Madison, Wisconsin and Olympia in Washington—"_

"Blaine," Kurt whined, cracking an eye and searching for Blaine's face in the dim light.

"_Phoenix, Arizona and Lansing, Michigan,"_ Blaine continued, his voice coming softly from somewhere behind Kurt. Limbs heavy, it was with what felt like a Herculean effort that he managed to prop himself up enough to turn his head to face the other way, where Blaine was stretched out next to him on top of the bed covers. A wide smile stretching his full lips, Blaine reached down and linked their hands, singing, _"Here's Honolulu; Hawaii's a joy, Clarksdale, Mississippi—"_

"It's Jackson, not Clarksdale," Kurt corrected him, voice raspy and still thick with sleep.

"I know. But we're _in_ Clarksdale, now," Blaine said.

"We are? You drove the rest of the way?" Kurt asked, tensing his body to stretch as Blaine shrugged. "What time is it?"

"Almost midnight," Blaine answered, and unlinked their hands to trace a fingertip along the line of Kurt's brow. "How's your head?"

"Better. Remind me not to watch our movies in the dark," Kurt answered, and buried his face in his pillow to stifle a yawn. He shivered pleasantly when Blaine's hand dropped to his neck, a ghost of sensation that he steeled himself against chasing: it was late, and they had plans.

"I've never noticed just how many freckles you have," Blaine said absently, dotting them out with his fingers, and Kurt chuckled as he turned onto his side and tucked his elbow underneath his head.

"Remember that time you stole your mom's eyebrow pencil and drew them all over your face because you wanted us to be twins?"

"Oh, God, don't remind me," Blaine groaned. "I looked like I had the chicken pox."

"And then she went _white_ when she saw you and started chasing you around with the thermometer," Kurt said, shaking with laughter. "I haven't thought about that in _forever."_

"Thank heaven for small mercies. You used to give me hell about it," Blaine said, his smile easy and fond. "Anyway, time to get up, Sleeping Beauty. We don't wanna be late."

As Blaine made to move away, Kurt caught his hand and pulled him close to press their lips together: an impulsive, sweet, and lingering kiss that felt timeless, like he'd possessed the knowledge of how Blaine kissed for far longer than three days.

_Has it really only been three days?_ he thought.

Blaine sighed into the kiss, tension Kurt hadn't even known was there leaching from his muscles, and just before he climbed off the bed, he whispered against Kurt's lips, "Later."

Kurt rolled onto his back and laid there for a moment, listening to the sounds of Blaine moving around the R.V. There was music playing, something with a dark, catchy synthesized riff that Kurt recognized as a song from the playlist Blaine had brought back from London—_Changed The Way You Kiss Me,_ he thought, and almost started to hum along until he caught himself. Shaking his head, he threw off the covers and walked around the bed to the small, mirrored closets set along the back wall of the bedroom. Out of the far left he pulled a simple white t-shirt and a thick, red and black plaid jacket. With a rueful smile at his own reflection, he plucked once at the front of his threadbare sleep shirt—the one Blaine had bought him for his twentieth birthday: charcoal black and bearing the slogan '_don't need a permit for these guns,'_ with arrows pointing left and right—and pulled it over his head.

When he caught Blaine watching him in the mirror, he called out, "Later, Casanova," and carried on dressing himself, trying to put all thoughts of 'later' out of his mind.

Sex with Blaine was… Well, it was _sex_ with _Blaine._

On the surface, at least—and that was where Kurt wanted to keep it. Nothing deeper, no hidden meaning belying every word or look or movement, and absolutely no mentioning just how dangerous what they were doing probably was. No, if it was kept strictly on the surface then nothing would change, and that was what Kurt wanted more than anything.

He didn't want to examine too deeply, for instance, the pleasant hum and buzz that pooled in his limbs whenever he caught Blaine looking at him like he'd hung the moon and hand-dotted the sky with stars. That would verge way too closely on something he didn't want to be, something he'd never been to anyone. He was the player, the quick fuck, the sure thing, and he liked it that way.

In his second year of college, he'd tried the relationship thing with a guy called Max whom he'd been pursuing for a while—and who _insisted_ on dates first. Kurt had managed to stick it out for eleven months, having fallen hard and fast into something that was like love but that he'd never wanted to fully give himself over to. It would have been easy, but it would also have a felt a little like dying because there was love but too much, like being smothered by it instead of wrapped up in it.

And then, after a week of fighting about Kurt's numerous shortcomings, Max decided to show Kurt just how well he was meeting expectations. Kurt had showed up at Max's apartment with white tulips and a promise to do better on his tongue, only to find that Max had already found the affection he'd been seeking in the arms and lips of another.

The next day, Blaine had received the email calling him to London for his internship, and Kurt had learned once and for all what he was really worth.

He wasn't vain enough to think that Blaine's leaving had anything to do with him, of course, but it was that it seemed so very, very easy for Blaine to leave him behind—both on the day he left, and during the course of their year apart.

Before that year, Kurt had taken Blaine for granted. He knew it, and so did Blaine. Kurt had always been content enough to spend time alone—he'd needed it more than anything, at times, but the memory of the crushing loneliness he'd felt with Blaine so far away kept him grounded, and grateful to have him back. He had to hold onto their friendship at all costs, and push everything else into the corner of his mind where he kept all the things he never wanted to think about.

"Kurt, are you—? Whoa. You look nothing like yourself," Blaine said as he came back into the bedroom, cutting through Kurt's melancholic reminiscing.

"That's the point," he replied shortly, appraising his appearance in the mirror before turning to Blaine. "We're in the south, after all."

"Yeah, but—" Blaine started, but Kurt cut him off with a swift kiss.

"Are you going to serenade me?" he asked, gesturing to the guitar slung across Blaine's back.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Blaine replied as he adjusted Kurt's lapel. "Come on."

They were parked only a short walk away from the crossroads, but with the light chill riding on the night breeze, Kurt was grateful for his thick jacket.

"What does 'chilling on my Jack Jones' mean?" he asked after a minute or so, the bewildering lyric from the song stuck in his head.

"It's Cockney rhyming slang," Blaine explained after a moment. "It means 'on my own'. God, I had the worst time trying to understand Tom when I first got over there."

"Which one is Tom, again?"

"He's the one who wants to be a music supervisor."

"Is he the one who—with the double-jointed thumbs?" Kurt asked, trying to separate out the faceless names in his mind. He'd heard so many stories about Blaine's friends from London over the summer that it was like being there and yet not, like he knew these people but never would—not until they each rose to the top of their respective fields, like everyone else who had studied under Serafino.

"No, that's Steve. He's also the one who switched me on to that song."

"Cinematographer, right?"

"Yep. He's got nothing on you, though."

Kurt smiled down at his Chucks for a moment, letting the good overtake his frustration surrounding 'the whole London thing,' as he referred to it—it stung, even now—and capitalized on the opportunity to change the subject.

"As much as I love film," he said, "it's kind of nice to _not_ have to talk about it constantly. You know? To not have to dissect and deconstruct every single little detail."

"Even though that's exactly what we've been doing with every movie we've watched," Blaine said, bumping their shoulders together. The movement jostled his guitar, and he righted it with a quick tug on the strap.

"Yes, but we're not being _forced_ to. No term papers or projects to show around and get feedback on."

"It's just easy, right? At our own pace."

"Another reason I'm happy we're doing this," Kurt said.

"But the main reason's the sex, right?" Blaine asked, leaning over conspiratorially, and Kurt tensed so that he didn't duck his head out of the curious sense of modesty that had been settling over him since Key West.

"Of course," he agreed, and took a sip of water from the Camelbak he'd borrowed from Blaine.

"Look, there it is!" Blaine said, pointing ahead to a fairly nondescript, triangular traffic island at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49. Out of a clump of trees rose a large sign bearing three guitars atop the legend 'The Crossroads,' their color drained under the orange of the streetlamps. There were no cars on the roads, and save for the increasing wind, there was silence.

"It's like we're the only two people in the world," Kurt thought aloud. Blaine gave him that look again, the one that electrified Kurt's very blood, and pulled him across the street to stand beneath the sign.

"So what would you make a deal with the devil for?" Blaine asked as he pulled out his phone to take a picture.

_You,_ Kurt thought, and shook himself. _Get it together._ "Right now, taking a bath in a real bathtub. I miss my Sunday Soak. What about you?"

Without missing a beat, Blaine answered, "A box of Double Dip Crunch."

"Really? I never tried it," Kurt said.

"It was only the greatest cereal the world has ever known," Blaine said, and sighed heavily. "They had something similar in London, but it wasn't the same. Honey Nut Shreddies, I think—like Quaker Shredded Wheat."

"Did you feel more at home there than you do here?" Kurt asked abruptly, looking at the way Blaine was rubbing his thumb along his forefinger. It was something he only ever did when talking about London, and something that gave him a distinctly dichotomous air, like there were two separate versions of him: the one whose heart belonged to London, and the one whose heart belonged to—

That belonged to this—this nomadic life and the search for home.

"I haven't ever really felt at home anywhere," Blaine said. "But less so here."

Kurt smiled wanly and buried his hands in his pockets with a shiver. "I believe you owe me a serenade, good sir," he reminded him.

"And I believe I told you I wouldn't dream of it," Blaine replied, but was already swinging his guitar around and flexing his fingers. "How about some blues, since we're here?"

"I don't know; wouldn't that be bad luck? It's a good thing we're not here on Halloween, what with all the spirits walking the earth again," Kurt bantered, casting around an exaggerated glance. Blaine simply smiled, pulled a guitar pick from his pocket, and began to play.

"_I got ramblin', I got ramblin' on my mind,"_ he sang, and Kurt couldn't help but laugh. _"I got ramblin', I got ramblin' all on my mind. Hate to leave my baby, but you treats me so unkind."_

Blaine seemed to settle into the song's unusual rhythm almost effortlessly, and all at once, Kurt could see the change in him. It had been subtle; something in the way he'd been holding himself just a little bit taller the past couple of days. _Like he used to,_ Kurt thought. When Blaine had been performing with the Cogs at The Cannery, he'd almost been leaning forward, still trying to convince Kurt to go even though he'd long since agreed. In his father's basement, he'd been sitting hunched over his guitar, working himself through his regret. Now, his chin was tipped up, his shoulders down and that old shine back in his eyes. He was just… Blaine again.

"_Runnin' down to the station, catch the first mail train I see. I got the blues about Mister So-and-So, and the child got the blues about me,"_ he sang, circling Kurt with stilted steps and slowly crowding him underneath the tree. Under the dark cover of the leaves above their heads, Blaine's eyes were nothing more than dark smudges, and yet Kurt could feel them locked on his own. Blaine began to strum more softly, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper.

Despite Kurt's small height advantage, in that moment Blaine seemed disarmingly tall. A few seconds after his back hit the trunk of the tree, Blaine wound the song up, the last notes fading into the charged air between them. He was breathing heavily, matching Kurt exhale for exhale, and Kurt reached forward to slowly push the guitar out of his hands and turn it to settle against his back. As easily as if they'd been doing it for years, Blaine hooked his arms around Kurt's waist beneath the flannel of his jacket, his cool hands finding their way to the skin at the small of his back.

"How's that for a serenade?"

Kurt's huff of laughter was shaky with anticipation. "I don't think you can serenade someone with the blues unless you're Clapton."

Blaine inched closer, rocking forward to whisper into Kurt's ear, "I'll sing you a love song if that's what you really want."

Caught between a spike of fear at just what Blaine could do to him and feeling like an eager, wide-eyed groupie, Kurt tipped Blaine's chin up and kissed him. Blaine wrapped his arms more tightly around him and blistering heat seeped through Kurt's clothes, his skin, his flesh and muscle all the way down to his bones. It was searing, adding to the welt forming somewhere deep in Kurt's chest.

It was a claim he couldn't ever hope to honor.

He could take Blaine's body, even though he couldn't take his heart. And that would just have to do.

* * *

**Distance: 4,418 miles**


	20. Past Misdemeanors (Tennessee)

**Disclaimer:** I neither own nor claim to own anything related to _Glee._ This story is for entertainment only, and is not endorsed by anyone affiliated with _Glee_ and/or its parent company.  
**Notes:** I have chosen to go spoiler-free this season, meaning that I know nothing about upcoming songs, storylines, plot points etc. If you could please refrain from posting any spoilers in your reviews, that would be great! Thank you :)

* * *

**Day 036: Monday 22****nd**** October, 2012  
****Past Misdemeanors (Tennessee)****  
**

"_What are we thinking for Tennessee?"_

"_How about _The Green Mile?"

"_Mm. We did say we'd leave it for later. Okay, sure."_

* * *

"_You've reached the voicemail of Alice Cooke. I'm currently unavailable, so please leave your name and number, and I'll return your call as soon as possible."_

"Hey, it's me—"

"Sweetheart?"

Blaine smiled, sinking back into the couch and watching the world go by through the window opposite. "Hi, Mom," he said. "How are you?"

"Happy to hear from you, oh prodigal son of mine," she said, and Blaine grinned even wider. It had been a week or so since they'd last spoken, and he'd known that if they'd gone on much longer without speaking, she'd be putting out a Code Adam. "And you? How are you and Kurt doing?"

"We're fine. Am I catching you at a bad time?"

"Not at all! No, I'm just finishing up a couple of reports, so I've been letting my calls go to voicemail."

"Any big storms heading in?" Blaine asked, absently tapping his foot along to the beat of _Blue Suede Shoes_ when he caught it faintly over the deep and constant rumble of the R.V.'s engine.

"Sunny skies here, but there's something forming out in the Caribbean that we think might get upgraded to a tropical storm soon," Alice said, a note of barely-masked excitement in her voice. Blaine knew very few people who loved their job as much as his meteorologist mother did, and ever since completing her training as a SKYWARN severe weather spotter, she'd been going into work each morning with a brightness about her the likes of which Blaine hadn't seen for years.

"Oh yeah? Where's it headed?"

"We don't know just yet; we're waiting for the NHC to confirm, but we should have a report by five. Anyway, enough about the _weather!_ Where are you boys?"

"Mom, we're on the way…" Blaine began, pausing for effect, "to Graceland."

"Graceland?" Alice breathed. "Oh, honey… Will you take lots of pictures for me?"

"Of course, Mom. I know how you love Elvis," Blaine said fondly. "I'll get you something from the gift shop and send it home next time we stop at a post office."

"You're a good boy," Alice said.

"I try."

"So what have you boys been up to? Anything exciting?"

Blaine bit his lip, wondering how much to tell her. He knew she'd been hoping for years that he and Kurt would "end this silly 'just friends' charade," but despite the numerous times they'd had sex at this point, they weren't boyfriends. There wasn't a label for what they were—not one that wasn't so reductive that Blaine was comfortable with it, at least.

"Honey?"

"I'm here, sorry," he said, standing up and moving toward the bedroom. He slid the door mostly closed behind him and sat down heavily on the bed. "Um, Mom… Kurt and I, we…"

There was a long pause on the line, and then, "Are you boys being safe?"

"Mom!" Blaine yelped indignantly, his face growing hot.

"Oh hush, honey. I have a right to ask," Alice said.

"Yes, Mom, we're being safe," Blaine grumbled.

"Good. Now tell me _everything!_ I've been waiting years for you two to get your acts together!"

"Mom, we're not—together, we're just…" Blaine trailed off, swallowing hard. He didn't particularly want to examine it too closely, not when he didn't fully understand it himself—and he didn't particularly want to tell his mother that he and Kurt were just having sex. He cleared his throat and, feeling inexplicably like he was telling a bald-faced lie as he did so, said succinctly, "We're just seeing how things go."

"I see. Well, that's… I'm happy for you, honey," Alice said, her words stilted but backed by a warmth that somehow reassured Blaine. "Just be good to each other, you hear me? I've seen you two apart, and it's not pretty."

"Oh my god, please don't be talking about when Burt took Kurt to Missouri for that fishing trip," Blaine said. "I was _eight,_ Mom."

"No, I just mean that I've seen it from both sides, and…" Alice trailed off, and took a deep breath as Blaine tried to puzzle out her meaning. "It may not be entirely healthy, but being apart isn't good for either of you, and I'd hate to see you get your hearts broken if this isn't want you both want."

"What do you mean, you've seen it from both sides?" Blaine asked.

"While you were in London," Alice said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "We'd have Kurt over for dinner once a week. He just looked so sad, honey, especially when you weren't able to make it home for Christmas. After that… Most weeks he'd go up to your room after dinner and I'd hear him listening to that song you love, the one from that Zooey Deschanel movie."

"_Sweet Disposition?"_ Blaine asked, swallowing hard against the sudden fracture in his mind. He looked at the mostly closed bedroom door, a single beam of light peeking through from the living area, and remembered lying on his single bed on Christmas Eve last year, listening to _When I Fall In Love_ on a loop for two hours—Kurt would never admit to a soul that it was his favorite song, Blaine knew, but he'd heard Kurt surreptitiously turning up the volume whenever it got played on Brunswick's oldies station enough times to know that it was. "I, um… I didn't know about that."

"Well, of course you didn't, honey. Kurt wouldn't want to upset you, and I'm sure he knew you were missing him just as much," Alice said. "But that's why I'm telling you. I just want you to be happy."

"I'm trying," Blaine replied. Quiet suddenly fell around him like the dropping of a curtain, and he cleared his throat again. "Mom, I think we're here so I'd better get going. We have—tickets for the tour and all, so…"

"Don't forget about those pictures," Alice reminded him, and Blaine nodded.

"I won't. Love you."

"I love you too, honey."

Blaine hung up feeling by turns miserable, confused, and peculiarly buoyed up. As he emerged from the bedroom and made his way toward the front of the vehicle, he caught sight of Kurt standing in the cab, leafing through the folder from the glove compartment and extracting print-outs for both their booking with the Memphis-Graceland R.V. park, and the tour of Graceland itself. His look was subdued again: straight leg, vintage wash jeans and a nondescript white t-shirt under a black military jacket with tabbed shoulders. When he turned around, a smile curving his lips as his eyes found Blaine's, he saw that Kurt had added a small pin above his chest pocket: the American flag.

"Aren't you laying it on a little thick?" he asked, gesturing to the pin, and Kurt shrugged.

"Why not go all out? It's not as easy for everyone to pass as it is for you, you know," he replied, neatly folding the sheets of paper in his hands and looking at Blaine expectantly.

"Ouch. Do we have anything for burns in that Narnia cabinet of yours?" Blaine asked, and Kurt chuckled, coming closer and shaking his head.

"Sterile bandages?" he quipped, and Blaine rolled his eyes.

"It's not like I'm some alpha-male type," he replied, tweaking the corners of his cream bow tie for emphasis.

"You know I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that we'd be stupid not to take… Precautions," Kurt clarified, eyes dropping to the front of Blaine's fitted black button-down. "I like this shirt on you. I don't think I've seen it before."

"I got it in—in London," Blaine said, and his stomach tightened as Kurt's eyes clouded for a moment, a shadow of a frown whispering across his features before being swallowed by a tight smile. He wanted to make it stretch from ear to ear, make Kurt grin and laugh and be silly and free, like he used to on the first day of every summer break when they'd go to the Brunswick diner and split an ice cream sundae for breakfast, reliving all the best moments of another completed school year.

His tentative, newfound sense of bravado was suddenly gone, broken apart by the dawning of terrible light at just what he'd put Kurt through by not being there for him, by letting his emails go unanswered and calls unreturned. Considering that Kurt had applied for the same internship, at the time Blaine had told himself that it was probably better for Kurt not to be hearing about all of the amazing things he was doing and learning—conveniently forgetting, of course, that Kurt would have his own stories to tell.

He stepped forward and cupped Kurt's face in his hands, watched as Kurt's eyes slipped automatically closed like he knew exactly what was coming, and kissed him firmly on the mouth. It still made him feel like he was tilting sideways, the feeling of Kurt's impossibly soft lips against his own, the way Kurt yielded and returned in equal measure, and for a moment he reveled in it.

"What was that for?" Kurt asked a little breathlessly when Blaine pulled back, dropping his hands to his sides.

"I just—wanted to kiss you."

"Any particular reason?"

"That was Mom on the phone," Blaine said after a pause. "She told me you used to go over for dinner sometimes, while I was away."

Kurt's features hardened, and he worked his jaw. Blaine's stomach dropped; the last time he'd seen that look on Kurt's face had been over Skype, when Blaine had told him he wasn't coming home for Christmas.

"_Come on, Blaine. Plenty of students take Christmas off, even if it's just a few days. Look at you! You've lost weight, you look like you're barely sleeping—"_

"_Save it, Kurt; I've already had a lecture from Mom."_

"_I'm not _lecturing_ you, Christ! I just, I—I was really looking forward to seeing you, and—"_

"_Kurt, I'm sorry. I have too much work to do here; I can't just put extra hours in the day."_

"_Then you know what? I don't want to hear the words 'I miss you' from you ever again."_

"_What? What's that supposed to mean?"_

"_It means that every time you tell me you miss me, all I can think about is standing in front of you telling you that I _missed_ you. Past tense. If all there's ever gonna be is missing you in present tense then I certainly don't need to be reminded of it."_

"_You know what, Kurt? If this is how it's gonna be, I'm fucking _glad _I'm not coming home."_

"What else did she say?" Kurt asked, his tone measured and so tightly controlled that Blaine knew it would be a mistake to say more. Instead, he took Kurt's hand and tried to link their fingers, but Kurt gently pulled out of his grasp. "What else did she say, Blaine?"

"Nothing," Blaine lied. "She just told me about the dinners. Kurt, I'm—"

"Let's not talk about it," Kurt interrupted, busying himself with scanning over their papers again.

"Kurt, come on, I—"

"No, Blaine!" Kurt exclaimed, rounding on him with fire in his eyes. Blaine took a half step back, hands raised. "Last year was one of the worst years of my life, and I don't want to talk about it with _anyone,_ least of all _you."_

"I think we _should_ talk about it," Blaine said quietly.

"Why? Why, so I can tell you about all the nights I spent waiting by my phone for a call or an email that never came? So I can tell you about going over to your house and up to your room and listening to your favorite song like I was a fucking dog pining for its master? So I can tell you how much I hate myself because I can't listen to you talking about London or your internship without hating _you_ a little bit, too?"

"You hate me?" Blaine whispered, eyes trained on that stupid flag pin because he couldn't meet Kurt's eyes, he couldn't.

Kurt sighed heavily, his shoulders dropping. He wrapped his arms around his middle, and said, "No, B. Of course I don't hate you. I just hate what that year did to me, what it turned me into."

"Oh."

"Look, let's just… Let's just go; we're almost late for our slot. Okay?" Kurt asked, ducking into Blaine's eye line with what looked like an attempt at a reassuring smile. He rubbed both hands up and down Blaine's arms, and Blaine returned his smile as best he could while still feeling like he'd caused an irreparable rift in their friendship.

_What if that's what this is?_ he thought as he followed Kurt out of the R.V. _What if I caused this chasm between us and the only way for us to fill it isn't with what we used to be, but with sex?_

_What if this breaks us both?_

Although he managed to remember to take plenty of pictures, the tour almost passed Blaine by completely. While Kurt looked fully engaged by the tour guide, following everything she said with the kind of rapt attention Blaine had only seen in their Golden Age of Hollywood lectures, the musty smell of the house was too close to how the hallway of his building in London had smelled, and try as he might, he couldn't put any of it from his mind.

They progressed through the tour quickly, and Blaine barely took in the grand mirrored staircase in the foyer, the clean and crisp white living room with its fifteen-foot couch, the dark wood and light countertops of the kitchen, or the royal blue accents of the dining room. The billiard room, with its walls covered in pleated, patterned fabric only drew his full attention when it elicited a small gasp from Kurt and excited whisperings from the other members of their group. Upstairs in the jungle room, Kurt leaned over to murmur something to him about how Elvis would have hotel rooms remodeled to look more like home when he was on the road, and Blaine simply nodded, not trusting himself to open his mouth lest a litany of apologies fall out: they were far too little, and far too late.

He and Kurt had never apologized to one another. Rather than "I'm sorry," it was Kurt driving to Yarmouth to get Blaine a loaf of his favorite sourdough from Rosemont Market to make up for the stale one in the bread box. Rather than "I'm sorry," it was Blaine staying up all night with Kurt to help rewrite the report he'd accidentally deleted. Rather than "I'm sorry," it was both of them arriving back at their dorm room at the same time, carrying DVDs and bottles of Cuervo and bursting into laughter that swept away any lingering vestiges of their disagreement about the cleaning schedule.

Once the tour was over, the glitz and shine of the vast array of awards in the racquetball building already fading from Blaine's mind, the tour guide left the group in the Meditation Garden behind the main house, quietly paying their respects at the graves of Elvis and his closest family members.

He and Kurt made a slow circuit of the garden's small pool, watching the clear blue water and listening to the steady splash of the fountains, and by the time they circled back around to stand at the foot of Elvis' headstone, the rest of the group had moved off.

Kurt was standing next to him, arms crossed over his chest as he took in the smooth, dark stone and the tributes of flowers and flags and stuffed animals bordering it. As Blaine watched, he removed the flag pin from the front of his jacket and placed it on the corner of the marble before straightening up and letting out a quiet sigh.

Blaine glanced around surreptitiously, checking that no one was within immediate earshot, and buried his hands in his pockets. He rocked back and forth on his feet a little to the rhythm he was counting off in his mind, and when he started humming the first line of _Always On My Mind,_ it was barely audible even to his own ears—_maybe I didn't treat you quite as good as I should have, maybe I didn't love you quite as often as I could have…_

As he settled into it, keeping his gaze trained on the water beyond the headstone, he grew a little louder. In his periphery, he saw Kurt freeze, and he wondered if he was thinking of all those times they'd apologized but not, those times they'd needed to but shown it instead of saying it.

At the chorus—_you were always on my mind, you were _always _on my mind—_he turned to look at Kurt, wavering a little at the expression in his eyes: shock, bewilderment and turmoil a storm of gray on blue. Pulling his right hand from his pocket, he reached out to brush his knuckles against Kurt's hip.

"I was?" Kurt asked thickly.

"Of _course_ you were," Blaine answered. And then, because he nevertheless needed to say it, "I'm so sorry."

Kurt bit his lip and, faster than Blaine could register, threw his arms around Blaine's neck, whispering into his skin, "Thank you."

"I told you," Blaine said quietly, wrapping his arms tightly around Kurt's waist.

"Told me what?"

"That I'd sing you a love song if you wanted me to."

Kurt sighed and shook his head, murmuring, "Don't ruin it, B," and all at once, Blaine was harshly reminded of their agreement.

_What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip._

Just then, he caught sight of a middle-aged man approaching the headstones and regarding their embrace through dangerously narrowed eyes. Reminded of exactly where they were and how careful they had to be, Blaine thought quickly. He gestured to the man in his arms and, with an exaggerated eye-roll, explained, "He's a _big_ fan."

The man quickly averted his gaze with an abrupt nod, and Kurt stepped back, seeming not to even need to see for himself to whom Blaine had been speaking. He cleared his throat and made a show of wiping at his dry eyes, biting his lip against the grin Blaine knew was threatening to break free. It made him feel lighter, somehow—like things were back to normal, like… Like he could do this.

"Come on," Kurt murmured in a low voice, inclining his head towards the house.

"Gift shop?" Blaine asked knowingly, and Kurt nodded.

"I'm sure it's all gold and sparkly, and so tacky-fabulous that we'll spend hours there."

Blaine chuckled, motioned for Kurt to lead the way, and said, "Let's go."

* * *

**Distance: 4,494 miles**


End file.
